Researchers from around the world will soon be able to forecast ecological processes with the development of an “information cafeteria” a team of OU researchers is creating called cyberCommons.

CyberCommons will allow others to obtain electronic real-time data of ecological systems. A $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation allowed researchers to fund this project.

“It’s taking the concept of forecasting we know so well on weather science and applying it to ecological science,” said Paul Risser, lead researcher for the project.

Ecological forecasting could be used to measure a number of important processes, such as the amount of carbon dioxide taken up by plants, how much nitrogen washes off the soil, how fast disease effecters are moved across the landscape, or what the effect of drought would be on the distribution of different plant or animal species, said Risser, chairman of the University Research Cabinet.

He said the program will be useful for business and policy makers and will enable students to learn from the study.

“The project is important because it allows us to think about ecological processes the same way we think about weather processes,” Risser said. “It’s also interesting because it brings together computer scientists and natural scientists, and it has an educational component to it.”

Teachers and students will be able to download data, models and visuals to use in the classroom for learning about ecological processes, predictions, and the use and management of data, according to a press release from OU Public Affairs.

Risser said the information would be available on a Web portal that will be used to create for-credit courses and summer workshops for universities.

Ecological forecasting could aid scientific research of issues related to climate change because changes in climate will naturally lead to changes in ecosystems, Risser said.

“It will be nice when [ecological forecasting] becomes so far developed that it becomes a natural part of the [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] assessments,” he said.

The UN Millennium Assessment, a research program that studies changes in ecosystems over the course of decades and projects these findings into the future, relies heavily on ecological forecasting for its reports.

Risser said the quality of research conducted at OU was the reason the National Science Foundation gave the university the grant.

“Because of the research done here, we’ve established a reputation in being essentially a leader in this idea of ecological forecasting,” he said.