Ecological forecasting is increasingly important for understanding and managing ecosystem responses to climate variability, extreme events, and long-term environmental change. However, developing ecological forecasting capabilities requires the integration of large volumes of heterogeneous Earth observation data, environmental datasets, climate model outputs, analytical tools, and collaborative scientific workflows. To address these challenges, the Ecological Projection Analytic Collaborative Framework (EcoPro) project developed an integrated cloud-based platform for ecological modeling, forecasting, visualization, and scientific collaboration.
EcoPro combines an Analytics Server, Visualization Server, and Collaboration Server within a unified cyberinfrastructure that supports data access, scientific workflow execution, model development, forecasting, visualization, and collaborative research. The project also developed generalized methodologies for ecological modeling and ecological projection. The ecological modeling workflow identifies key environmental drivers of ecosystem change and develops predictive ecological models using Earth observations and environmental datasets. The ecological projection workflow integrates climate model projections, statistical downscaling, uncertainty quantification, and ecological forecasting to generate future ecosystem projections under alternative climate scenarios.
The EcoPro framework was demonstrated through two real-world ecological applications: California coastal kelp forests and Sierra Nevada conifer forests. These studies identified key environmental drivers of ecosystem change, developed predictive ecological models, and generated future projections of ecosystem conditions under multiple climate scenarios. Results demonstrate the potential of cloud-based ecological forecasting systems to transform Earth observations into actionable information for ecosystem monitoring, climate adaptation, and resource management.
Future work will focus on extending EcoPro to additional ecosystems and biodiversity applications and integrating emerging observations from NASA Earth science instruments and missions, including ECOSTRESS, EMIT, AVIRIS, UAVSAR, NISAR, and PACE. These observations provide complementary measurements of vegetation traits, ecosystem structure, biodiversity indicators, plant and ecosystem stress, and environmental conditions, creating new opportunities to improve ecological modeling, forecasting, biodiversity monitoring, and decision-support capabilities. By incorporating these multi-source observations into the EcoPro framework, future ecological forecasting systems can achieve improved predictive accuracy, reduced uncertainty, and enhanced monitoring of ecosystem health and change. The EcoPro framework provides a pathway toward next-generation ecological forecasting systems and ecological digital twins that support NASA Earth Action objectives and enable more actionable information for ecosystem management, conservation planning, and climate adaptation.