Faculty Research Fellow Michael Dietze Gives NSF Distinguished Lecture

Michael Dietze, an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment and a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, recently gave a Distinguished Lecture hosted by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Biological Sciences.

In the lecture, Prof. Dietze discusses the challenges and opportunities in near-term ecological forecasting, an emerging interdisciplinary research area spanning environmental monitoring, statistics, and cyberinfrastructure, that aims to improve predictions about ecological processes on timescales that can be validated and updated. He explores ways that iterative forecasts can improve and accelerate basic environmental science while making that science more directly relevant to society.

As a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, Prof. Dietze has launched the Ecological Forecasting Initiative, “a grassroots consortium aimed at building and supporting an interdisciplinary community of practice around near-term (daily to decadal) ecological forecasts.” He is also planning a symposium in Washington, DC, in spring 2019 to foster dialogue, innovation, and new research directions in ecological forecasting among an interdisciplinary community including social, computational, and physical scientists, as well as stakeholders from multiple industries, federal agencies, and more.