August 1, 2022
Participants’ housing will be extended in the dorms until August 2 departure and food will be provided.
Schedule:
July 31, 2022 – free day. Dinner with faculty and researchers will be arranged.
August 1, 2022: 9-4, Workshop, lunch with faculty, campus tours.
The Ecological Forecasting Initiative is a grassroots consortium aimed at building and supporting an interdisciplinary community of practice around near-term (daily to decadal) ecological forecasts.
Much of the imperative to focus on ecological forecasting comes from the need to respond to the multitude of environmental problems facing society and the aspiration that environmental decisions be made with the best available science in hand. In fields such as fisheries, wildlife, algal blooms, wildfire, and human disease, we often need to know how ecosystems, and the services they provide, are going to change in the future and how do humans affect those trajectories? Because all decision making is ultimately based on what will happen in the future, either under the status quo or different decision alternatives, environmental decision making ultimately depends on forecasts. Ecological forecasters try to make those forecasts, and their uncertainties, explicit.
An important mission of the Ecological Forecasting Initiative is to support the next generation of environmental decision makers in developing the computational and data analysis skills needed to respond to environmental problems with a high level of technical expertise.
Participants will have hands-on experience in a computer lab trying out coding using R, finding important data sets and resources, and looking at some basic web resources for furthering your skillset.