Now more than ever, science demands collaboration, communication and the ability to reproduce experiments and data. While this reproducibility isn't easy, environmental scientists hope it can help create greater understanding of their findings in studies of natural, economic and social sciences.
These ideas are currently being tested in the Ocean Health Index project. The Ocean Health Index (OHI) is a scientific framework that quantifies and illustrates benefits the ocean holds for humans, and helps inform sustainable ocean management using the best available information. Every year since 2012, scientists have repeated Ocean Health Index methods to track change in global ocean health. Using the OHI framework, they lead annual global assessments of 220 coastal nations and territories.
“As it’s often said — you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The Ocean Health Index gives a comprehensive, repeatable measure of how well we’re protecting the social, economic and ecological benefits we get from our oceans.” said Mary Turnipseed, program officer for the Moore Foundation’s Marine Conservation Initiative.
Despite initial challenges, researchers eventually developed a wealth of tools and resources that changed their scientific approach, making it more efficient. A more detailed narrative of their success in finding better science in less time can be found in Nature magazine. Creating reproducible and collaborative data using the Ocean Health Index holds great promise for creating a greater understanding of how ocean ecosystems benefit the population.
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