Trying to figure out what to wear tomorrow based on the weather?
You'll probably check a weather forecasting app, right!
Now pretend you're a farmer
and you're trying to figure out what crop will be the most profitable
to plant next year, based on the weather.
What about 50 years from now?
Instead of checking a short-term weather forecast for these answers,
scientists are working to advance the field of ecological forecasting.
Ecological forecasting is similar to weather forecasting
but instead of only predicting weather a couple days out
ecological forecasting attempts to predict environmental conditions
based on interactions between organisms and their environment on a longer time scale.
Ecological forecasting is really important because it can
provide a glimpse into the future state of an ecosystem
from wild lands like forests and marshes to
manage lands like farms and cities.
This sort of forecasting will help landowners and policymakers anticipate upcoming
environmental change and possibly mitigate the impacts.
To be able to forecast how an ecosystem will be in the future, scientists used data collected
from the past and present, in combination with models.
No, not those kind of models!
Ecological forecasting models are a series of equations produced by scientists
that are fed data about air, land, and water.
Organizations, like NEON, provide these data freely so that scientists can produce forecasts
on how an ecosystem will be in the future.
But how can we know if the forecasts these models produce will be accurate?
On a short timescale, scientists can build a forecasting model that will make a prediction
about the near future say 4 months from now. After the four months have passed, they can compare the
predictions to what actually happened and use those observations to improve the model.
Each iteration allows scientists to peek further into the future of that ecosystem.
This is similar to how the National Weather Service began its forecasting process in the 50s.
Back then, scientists were predicting the 36-hour forecast with about 23% accuracy.
[clip: The odds are way against it.]
The more weather forecasts were produced and compared with actual data, The Weather Service has
been able to adjust and improve its 36-hour forecasting model to be almost 85% accurate.
One useful application for ecological forecasting could be to
predict corn production in Iowa ten years from now,
another might be forecasting the types of disease-carrying mosquitoes that will
live in New York in 50 years
Waiting that long to compare projections to the results just isn't feasible for advancing this science.
An alternative is to build a model based on a historical time period,
like using data collected from 1960 to build a model about what would happen 50 years later.
And since we already have that data from 2010, we can test it.
These types of comparisons allow scientists to continually improve the accuracy of their models
and reduce the amount of uncertainty in them.
Uncertainties in the models are the variables that scientists can't fully account for
but that's not to say they can't eventually be with
new technology,
more data, and
discoveries
Uncertainties are an essential part of ecological forecasting because they help to define boundaries
on the forecasted state of the ecosystem.
The more uncertainty in the model the less scientists can decisively project the future state of the ecosystem.
As the model projection extends into the future, the uncertainty around the forecast also increases.
But, like the weather forecasting models have shown, with each forecast, test, and update
uncertainties decrease and accuracy improve.
With that, we know more about the range of scenarios that will not happen and the scenarios that are likely
to happen become easier to identify.
As we move toward the future and ecological forecasting becomes more accurate
scientists can better address processes like making forecasts for how an ecosystem will react
if we institute a policy to reduce greenhouse emissions by 25 percent by the year 2040.
So pulling it all together, ecological forecasting is a really useful way to gain
a better understanding of our ecosystems and how they are changing.
It's a way scientists are helping policymakers and landowners take a peek into the future
to anticipate major environmental change.
Like the weather service models have shown,
ecological forecasting accuracy will improve through time
as more predictions are made test it against actual data and then refined.
As a result, ecological forecasts will inform planning efforts that allow
humans and the environment to thrive moving forward.