This $281,104 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (CFDA 47.074 - Biological Sciences) to Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) will support a Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) project to quantify ecosystem predictability across daily to decadal timescales.
The project will establish a real-time monitoring and data-sharing program at two drinking water supply reservoirs, collecting data on water temperature, clarity, chemistry, phytoplankton, and other variables. This data will be used to generate and evaluate real-time ecological forecasts to predict future ecosystem conditions and the associated uncertainty. By iteratively assessing these forecasts as new data is collected, the project will identify the limits of predictability for different ecosystem variables and environmental conditions. The results will test hypotheses about ecosystem predictability, develop workflows for integrating observations into forecasting and data publishing, and broaden participation of underrepresented students in environmental data science. All forecasts will also be disseminated to water utilities to support real-time decision making.