The NSF funded EFI Research Coordination Network is hosting an Ecological Forecast Challenge. And Dr. Nicholson is looking to form a team of Data Science and Analytics students who want to work with students from the OU Department of Biology to compete together!
The challenge revolves around five theme areas that span aquatic and terrestrial systems, and population, community, and ecosystem processes across a broad range of ecoregions that uses data collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).
NEON is a continental-scale ecological observation facility that collects and provides open data from 81 field sites across the United States. The comprehensive data, spatial extent and remote sensing technology provided by the NEON project will contribute to a better understanding and more accurate forecasting of how human activities impact ecology and how our society can more effectively address critical ecological questions and issues.
The five theme areas are listed below.
| Aquatic Ecosystems |
| Terrestrial Carbon and Water Fluxes |
| Tick Populations |
| Phenology |
| Beetle Communities |
The NEON Ecological Forecast Challenge is an open, community challenge that hopes to answers questions regarding which modeling frameworks, mechanistic processes, and statistical approaches best capture community, population, and ecosystem dynamics. The Challenge is open to any individual or team that wants to submit forecasts and includes categories for different career stages (i.e., undergraduate, graduate, post-doc, single-institution team, multi-institution team, international team)
Please contact Dr. Nicholson at cnicholson @ OU (dot) edu for more information.
