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Macrosystems EDDIE Module 8: Using Ecological Forecasts to Guide Decision-Making (Instructor Materials)

Because of increased variability in populations, communities, and ecosystems due to land use and climate change, there is a pressing need to know the future state of ecological systems across space and time. Ecological forecasting is an emerging approach which provides an estimate of the future state of an ecological system with uncertainty, allowing society to preemptively prepare for fluctuations in important ecosystem services. However, forecasts must be effectively designed and communicated to those who need them to make decisions in order to realize their potential for protecting natural resources. In this module, students will explore real ecological forecast visualizations, identify ways to represent uncertainty, make management decisions using forecast visualizations, and learn decision support techniques. Lastly, students customize a forecast visualization for a specific stakeholder's decision needs. The overarching goal of this module is for students to understand how forecasts are connected to decision-making of stakeholders, or the managers, policy-makers, and other members of society who use forecasts to inform decision-making. The A-B-C structure of this module makes it flexible and adaptable to a range of student levels and course structures. This EDI data package contains instructional materials and the files necessary to teach the module. Readers are referred to the Zenodo data package (Woelmer et al. 2022; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7074674) for the R Shiny application code needed to run the module locally.