Tuesday, July 7, 2026

4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Room BE.0.18

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Details

Participants need to bring their own laptop for this workshop. Europe now possesses unprecedented amounts of biodiversity data. A key need is to harness this momentum not just for monitoring and data analysis, but also for creating predictions to improve the management of natural systems. In this workshop, we will introduce the first European ecological forecasting challenge to advance predictions using a wide range of biodiversity data. We invite participants to develop short-term forecasts of changes in abundances of shrubs, insects, birds, or mammals in one of Europe’s biodiversity hotspots: Doñana National Park in southern Spain. Doñana has long-term monitoring infrastructure and a wide range of habitats, making it an ideal test-bed for forecasting ecosystem dynamics. Other forecasting challenges have shown how forecasting many ecological time series before observations enables rapid learning about predictability, model workflows, and community practices. Short-term forecasts of vegetation indices (e.g., NDVI) and multi-species shrub abundances are vital for anticipating habitat productivity, informing wetland-to-woodland transitions and guiding conservation decisions under climate and hydrological stress. In this workshop we will (1) explore the automated workflow underpinning the forecasting challenge; (2) show how long-term biodiveristy monitoring and remote-sensing datasets can be integrated to develop interative predictinos; and (3) invite participants to develop and submit forecasting models for Doñana (e.g., NDVI, shrub cover, animal abundance) in real time, see how forecasts are scored, and (4) discuss how forecasts can be adapted to other systems to feed into future conservation research and adaptive management. We aim to build an interdisciplinary community of practice around forecasting for biodiversity-rich, climate-sensitive systems beyond Doñana.

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Organiser