The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is launching an innovative “Data Task Force” to support synthesis research with a new $2.1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. In contrast to mining Big Data, synthesis research recognizes the value of small, information rich datasets generated by scientists all over the world. However, collecting, combining, and “wrangling” these many discrete data sets for synthesis presents a daunting challenge.
“Combining heterogeneous data from many sources presents significant technical difficulties, not to mention the cultural hurdles associated with getting data providers to hand over their data,” says Carly Strasser, Ph.D., a program officer for science at the Moore Foundation. “NCEAS’ 21 years of leadership in synthesis science, cutting-edge informatics approaches and well-regarded data management tools will help to ensure the Data Task Force's success in overcoming these barriers.”
The first Data Task Force will support data collection and management for the newly launched State of Alaska’s Salmon and People (SASAP) synthesis working groups, and in the process, will assess the efficacy of this approach for synthesis research in general. SASAP researchers plan to engage the entire salmon stakeholder community to assess the current state and plan for the future sustainability of salmon and the people of Alaska who rely on them. To support the SASAP working groups, the Data Task Force will collect currently inaccessible data from state agencies, universities, and NGOs and “wrangle” it into useable formats.
By designing a user-friendly and easily maintained repository, the Data Task Force will give the public access to scientific, ecological, economic, and social data on Alaskan salmon, enabling holistic analysis of salmon system management. The task force will include an ethnographer, David Ribes from University of Washington, to study the process from beginning to end, including how the data and synthesis teams interact, the ease of data sharing with various groups, choices that have to be made in the data integration process, and ultimately, what knowledge begins to emerge out of the data once it is in use.
"NCEAS has two decades of experience with synthesis projects that qualitatively shows that data collation and integration can severely limit the scope and slow the results of scientific synthesis. This Data Task Force will be our first large-scale experiment in how much more productive working groups can be when data limits are lifted,” explains Matthew B. Jones, NCEAS Director of Informatics and the project’s principal investigator. “NCEAS will compare and contrast the outputs from SASAP to those of the many synthesis projects done without a Data Task Force to determine the benefits and costs of including data task forces in synthesis studies moving forward."
The SASAP project has synthesis working groups examining issues that range from salmon distribution and habitat to salmon’s role in subsistence traditions; this will provide a fertile testing ground for the Data Task Force -- and ideally, an example of a more efficient, more successful approach to data collection, management, and curation for synthesis projects.
About the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and preservation of the special character of the Bay Area. Visit www.moore.org or follow @MooreFound.
About NCEAS
Established in 1995, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) is a research center of the University of California, Santa Barbara and was the first national synthesis center of its kind. NCEAS fosters collaborative synthesis research – assembling interdisciplinary teams to distill existing data, ideas, theories, and methods to accelerate the generation of new scientific knowledge at a broad scale. Visit www.nceas.ucsb.edu or follow @nceas.
Message sent
Thank you for sharing.