Scientists suggest amping up efforts to mitigate effects of climate change

Three Virginia Tech Center for Ecosystem Forecasting researchers were among 23 global experts to call for scaling up current near-term — daily to decade — iterative ecological forecasting in an article recenlty published in Nature Climate Change.

“As variability in many ecosystems is increasing due to global change, there is an urgent need for real-time forecasts to help guide natural resource decision-making,” said Cayelan C. Carey, the Roger Moore and Mojdeh Khatam-Moore Faculty Fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences and co-director of the center.

Carey, along with Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation Professor R. Quinn Thomas and Leah Johnson, associate professor of statistics, were co-authors of the paper, which explains how ecological forecasting is effective in anticipating and mitigating changes in ecosystems from climate change and biodiversity crisis. 

As opposed to long-term forecasting, near-term iterative forecasting creates a learning loop in which predictions are made, compared with new observations and data, and then updated to improve future predictions. It also helps managers and end users anticipate ecological changes in a timeframe that allows for planning and modifications to avert disastrous outcomes. 

“For example, if drinking water managers received a forecast showing a high likelihood of a toxic phytoplankton bloom next week, they could make decisions today to preempt or limit that water quality impairment from occurring,” said Carey, also an affiliate faculty with the Fralin Life Sciences Institute’s Global Change Center.

Local and regional uses of iterative ecological forecasting are beneficial, but to address environmental goals on a global scale, those efforts need to be magnified on a large-scale international level. 

“We need to build cross-sector partnerships that span academic, governmental agencies, industry, NGOs [nongovernmental organizaionts], and other interested parties,” said Thomas, who also co-directs the Center for Ecosystem Forecasting.

International models and technical advances, such as the next-generation earth system models already exist, but they underutilize near-term forecasting in favor of long-term processes, according to the paper. The authors maintain this represents missed opportunities to inform climate adaptation, mitigation, carbon monitoring, and the United Nations Sustainable Development goals.

“To leverage these technical advances, ecological forecasting needs to build communities of practice to support its growth as a discipline,” said Thomas, a Data Science Faculty Fellow in the College of Science. “We also need to grow the community in a way that includes everyone influenced by climate change, which involves actively addressing issues of equity.” 

One international grassroots consortium that has built a community of practice is the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, of which many of the paper authors are members. Virginia Tech is hosting the annual meeting this May 19-22, 2025, in Blacksburg.

Since 2021, the group has hosted the NEON Forecasting Challenge, which Thomas leads. With a goal of predicting ecological data from the National Ecological Observatory Network before it is collected, the group has developed educational resources, community cyberinfrastructure, and comparative analyses. Its work, collaboration, and efforts to make data available to the public exemplify the kind of infrastructure needed as a model for going forward on a much larger scale.

“For ecological forecasts to become most useful, we need to be able to learn from what has and hasn't worked,” said Johnson, who is also an affiliate faculty in the Center for Ecosystem Forecasting. “This requires that the data and models used for generating forecasts be fair and open [through public platforms] so that diverse individuals and groups can test and improve them.” 

Access and inclusivity are two goals that could be achieved through amping up and expanding existing pathways to near-term iterative ecological forecasting. The authors believe that cultivating relationships across all sectors with a broader range of partners, end users, and decision makers will help incorporate low-and middle-income countries and marginalized communities, particularly those that are more vulnerable to climate change and biodiversity loss.

“Ecological forecasting is at a critical point for future growth,” said Michael Dietz, lead author and professor at Boston University who leads the Ecological Forecasting Laboratory. “We need to increase our ability to predict in order to adapt and adjust to widespread change in ecosystems in the face of climate change.”

Atmospheric scientists came to this crossroads in the 1960s, the authors point out, and those scientists chose the challenging path forward to create a larger, more invested community. Ecological forecasting scientists are hoping to follow that same road and bring along others for a climate resilient future.