Can you predict the future? A tutorial for the National Ecological Observatory Network Ecological Forecasting Challenge

This tutorial introduces participants to key concepts in ecological forecasting and provides hands-on materials for submitting forecasts to the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Forecasting Challenge (hereafter, Challenge), hosted by the Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network. The tutorial has been developed and used with >300 participants and provides the ecological understanding, workflows, and tools to enable ecologists with minimal forecasting experience to participate in the Challenge via a hands-on R-based tutorial. This tutorial introduces participants to a near-term, iterative forecasting workflow that includes obtaining observations from NEON, developing a simple forecasting model, generating a forecast, and submitting the forecast to the Challenge, as well as evaluating forecast performance once new observations become available. The overarching aim of this tutorial is to lower the barrier to ecological forecasting and empower participants to develop their own ecological forecasts.