Computer programs have taken an important role in the prediction of future ecological trajectories. This study reviewed the existing computer programs that aim to predict future trajectories of ecosystems, biological populations, or ecological systems. Overall, 106 programs were examined. A rich set of programs exist and most of them are free. A substantial proportion (43%) are distributed open source. A majority (57%) of these programs took some form of uncertainty into account, although not always in a rigorous way. Programs considering uncertainty were preferentially implemented in a standard compiled language (C/Fortran) or a statistical language (R). The vast majority of the programs were delivered with recent, sometimes extensive, documentation. None of the reviewed programs used an open-source collaborative framework. Two points require future attention from developers of software for ecological prediction: greater care in the implementation of uncertainty, particularly with appropriate statistical methods, and adoption of an open-source, collaborative framework.

计算机程序在未来生态轨迹的预测中发挥了重要作用。这项研究回顾了旨在预测生态系统，生物种群或生态系统未来轨迹的现有计算机程序。总体而言，检查了106个程序。存在丰富的程序集，其中大多数是免费的。很大一部分（43％）是分布式开源。这些程序中的大多数（57％）考虑了某种形式的不确定性，尽管并不总是以严格的方式进行。优先考虑不确定性的程序以标准编译语言（C / Fortran）或统计语言（R）实施。绝大多数程序是随最新的（有时是广泛的）文档一起提供的。所审查的程序均未使用开源协作框架。