Collaborative Proposal: MSB-ENSA: The Near-term Ecological Forecasting Initiative

世界范围内的生命系统正在发生变化，每天都在做出影响其健康和可持续性的关键决定。面对气候变化和其他环境挑战，社会不能再仅仅依靠过去的经验来理解和管理生活世界。这个奖项提出了一个问题，？怎样才能像预测天气那样预测生态过程？该项目将开发一种类似天气预报的可操作生态预报能力，在预报、执行分析和根据新证据更新预测之间采用迭代循环。这种获得反馈、建立经验和修正模型和方法的迭代过程对于建立预测能力是至关重要的，也是在高度不确定性下做出任何决策的关键部分。除了使生态学与管理更加相关之外，近期预测还经常将具体的、定量的预测与新数据进行比较，这是对任何科学理论最有力的检验之一。该项目将利用国家生态观测站网络收集的生态数据，产生近期预测，涵盖广泛的主题：叶片物候、土地碳和能量通量、蜱传疾病发病率、小型哺乳动物种群、水生生产力和土壤微生物多样性和功能。这种广泛的、比较的方法将用于解决关于生态学中可预测性本质的交叉问题，并发展一个总体的预测理论和方法。近期生态预测计划（NEFI）将在三个层面推进生态知识：(1)关于生态系统可预测性的总体跨主题假设；(2)提出关于驱动过程和可预测性的主题内问题；(3)推进工具和技术，使定量假设检验的迭代方法成为可能。本研究的主要假设是：(1)生态可预测性更多地受到过程误差而不是初始条件误差的驱动；(2)不同主题的不确定性来源具有一致性；(3)跨主题，时空自相关呈正相关；(4)时空自相关与可预测性极限呈正相关。总的来说，这些问题的答案解决了生态可预测性的一般模式在多大程度上存在，这将促进我们对生态过程的基本理解，并限制做出预测的实际问题。NEFI的预期结果是：(1)传播有利于社会的数据产品和预测；(2)开发新工具和网络基础设施，加强研究和教育；(3)促进教、训、学。具体的NEFI预测，如蜱传疾病风险、水生水华、碳固存和叶片物候学，与社会直接相关。预测将通过开放的网络基础设施提供，向公众传播预测，并允许其他生态学家提供新的预测。为了做出这些预测，NEFI将开发一个开源的统计软件包，ecoforecastR，它将推动社区目前使用的工具和技术。最后，除了通过该项目直接指导的研究生外，NEFI还将举办一年一度的夏季生态预测课程，以培养下一代生态学家。

Living systems are changing worldwide and critical decisions that affect their health and sustainability are being made every day. In the face of climate change and other environmental challenges, society can no longer rely solely on past experience to understand and manage the living world. This award asks the question, ?What would it take to forecast ecological processes the same way we forecast the weather?? This project will development an operational ecological forecasting capability similar to weather forecasting that uses an iterative cycle between making forecasts, performing analyses, and updating predictions in light of new evidence. This iterative process of gaining feedback, building experience, and correcting models and methods is critical for building a forecast capacity, and also a crucial part of any decision making under high uncertainty. In addition to making ecology more relevant to management, near-term forecasts routinely compare specific, quantitative predictions to new data, which is one of the strongest tests of any scientific theory. This project will generate near-term forecasts that leverage ecological data collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network and spanning a wide range of themes: leaf phenology, land carbon and energy fluxes, tick-borne disease incidence, small-mammal populations, aquatic productivity, and soil microbial diversity and function. This broad, comparative approach will be used to address cross-cutting questions about the nature of predictability in ecology and develop an overarching body of forecasting theory and methods. The Near-term Ecological Forecasting Initiative (NEFI) will advance ecological knowledge at three levels: (1) overarching across-theme hypotheses about the predictability of ecological systems; (2) pressing within-theme questions about what drives process and predictability; and (3) advancing the tools and techniques that will enable an iterative approach to quantitative hypothesis testing. The overarching hypotheses of this project are that: (1) ecological predictability is more driven by processes error than initial condition error; (2) there are consistent patterns in the sources of uncertainty across themes; (3) across themes, spatial and temporal autocorrelation are positively correlated; and (4) spatial and temporal autocorrelation are positively correlated with limits of predictability. Overall, the answers to these questions address to what extent there are general patterns to ecological predictability, which would advance both our basic understanding of ecological processes and constrain the practical problem of making forecasts.The expected outcomes of NEFI are to: (1) Disseminate data products and predictions that benefit society; (2) Develop new tools and cyberinfrastructure that enhances research and education; and (3) to promote teaching, training, and learning. Specific NEFI forecasts, such as tick-borne disease risk, aquatic blooms, carbon sequestration, and leaf phenology, are of direct relevance to society. Forecasts will be made available via open cyberinfrastructure that disseminates forecasts to the public and allows other ecologists to contribute new forecasts. To produce these forecasts, NEFI will develop an open-source statistical package, ecoforecastR, which will advance the tools and techniques beyond what is currently used by the community. Finally, in addition to the graduate students directly mentored through the project, NEFI will run an annual summer course on ecological forecasting that will train the next generation of ecologists.