Petchey, O.L., Pontarp, M., Massie, T.M. et al. (15 more authors) (2015) The ecological forecast horizon, and examples of its uses and determinants. Ecology Letters, 18 (7). pp. 597-611. ISSN 1461-023X
Abstract
Forecasts of ecological dynamics in changing environments are increasingly important, and are available for a plethora of variables, such as species abundance and distribution, community structure and ecosystem processes. There is, however, a general absence of knowledge about how far into the future, or other dimensions (space, temperature, phylogenetic distance), useful ecological forecasts can be made, and about how features of ecological systems relate to these distances. The ecological forecast horizon is the dimensional distance for which useful forecasts can be made. Five case studies illustrate the influence of various sources of uncertainty (e.g. parameter uncertainty, environmental variation, demographic stochasticity and evolution), level of ecological organisation (e.g. population or community), and organismal properties (e.g. body size or number of trophic links) on temporal, spatial and phylogenetic forecast horizons. Insights from these case studies demonstrate that the ecological forecast horizon is a flexible and powerful tool for researching and communicating ecological predictability. It also has potential for motivating and guiding agenda setting for ecological forecasting research and development.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The Authors Ecology Letters published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd and CNRS. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Dynamics; ecosystems; environmental change; forecasting; futures; prediction; scenarios |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL NE/I022027/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Mar 2016 11:25 |
Last Modified: | 03 Mar 2016 11:25 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.12443 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/ele.12443 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:95927 |