Ecological Forecasting for integrated science: Advances and applications
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Edited by Istem Fer, Billur Bektas, Angelika Kübert
Robust prediction of the effects of global change on ecosystems supports the design of effective strategies to secure and improve the ongoing provision of ecosystem services. A powerful framework to advance theory and to support natural resource management and biodiversity conservation strategies is iterative near-term (subdaily to decadal) ecological forecasting. Ecological forecasting describes the process of predicting, across different spatial and temporal scales, the state of ecological entities and processes under scenarios of climate, land use and socio-economic change while addressing multiple sources of uncertainty and variability. The iterative cycle of creating forecasts, evaluating them with new observations, updating the models, and then making new forecasts has the potential to accelerate learning across many ecological subdisciplines. This cycle builds on openly available data and can systematically combine multiple sources of information which is increasingly common in ecological observatory networks, such as the eLTER.In this session, we aim to highlight recent advances in ecological forecasting theory and applications enhancing the decision-relevance of such predictions. The session will be chaired by members of the European Ecological Forecasting Initiative, a grass-roots community of researchers, practitioners and policy makers developing ecological forecasts to inform decision making to mitigate the impacts of global change.