This is a course on how ecological systems change through time and how to forecast how they will change in the future. It combines reading and discussing primary scientific literature with R tutorials on how to work with time-series data and make forecasts in R. It is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates who have started reading the primary scientific literature and have a basic background in R. More details about the intended audience are available on the Audience page
It is taught each Fall at the University of Florida by Drs. Morgan Ernest and Ethan White. The full course including lecture notes and R tutorials is openly available on this site so that anyone can learn these important approaches and skills for themselves. Course materials are openly licensed and developed on GitHub. Anyone is welcome to use the material in their own courses and contributions are always welcome.
Work on this course was supported by the National Science Foundation through grant 1929730 to S.K.M. Ernest and E.P. White, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative through grant GBMF4563 to E.P. White, and the University of Florida. Thanks to Claire Williams and Kelley Graff for their work scheduling and managing courses at UF and especially to Eric Hellgren for providing us the time to make the course openly available. Also, many thanks to our students over the last 7 years for their enthusiasm in learning about ecological forecasting and openness in providing feedback that has helped us improve the course with every iteration.