Aquatic ecosystem challenge

Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly threatened by adverse water quality as a result of rapid changes in land use and climate. In response, iterative, near-term ecological forecasting has emerged as a powerful tool to predict the future state of inland waters. We developed a challenge inviting participants to predict water temperature and dissolved oxygen in two NEON sites: Barco Lake and Posey Creek one-week into the future. Our goal with this challenge is to 1) create freely accessible forecast workflows; 2) develop a community of practitioners who forecast ecological processes; and 3) provide insight to the predictability of freshwater ecosystems.