Data Management and Building Community in a Global Synthesis of

Under-Ice Productivity

Kara H. Woo, Stephanie E. Hampton, Aaron W. E. Galloway
Washington State University | @kara_woo
IAGLR 2015, Burlington, VT

What goes on under ice in lakes?

Photo: Ted Ozersky

Just how broad is interest in under ice ecology?

>100 survey responses, >80 with data on:

Challenges for synthesis

  1. Managing communications
  2. Integrating heterogeneous data
  3. Building a sense of community
  4. Incentives

Data Template

Goals

  1. Integrate data as seamlessly as possible
  2. Encourage sharing
  3. Use researchers' system-specific knowledge

Policies

Document describing how data will be used and shared

Internally to collaborators first, then eventually public

Policies shared early and often

Validate Data

R package icetest

Lots of Email

The Fun Part

Workshop at NCEAS

Collaborative website

86 lakes represented (so far)

Ice-off vs. ice-on chlorophyll-a

plot of chunk chla_iceon_iceoff_jitter

plot of chunk chla_iceon_iceoff_box

Conclusions

Managing communications


Integrating heterogeneous data


Building community


Incentives

  • Be responsive
  • Centralize communication
  • Plan ahead for data integration
  • Validate the data
  • Be inclusive
  • Communicate expectations early and often

Acknowledgements

NSF DEB #1431428

Ice workshop steering committee: Emily Stanley, Ted Ozersky, Chris Polashenski

Undergraduate researcher: Matthew Pruett

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis