The Geosciences EarthCube program recognizes the importance of aligning cyber-infrastructure activities with the needs of end user research communities. To that end we propose to convene 50-70 members of the coral reef community in two workshops, one held at the University of Hawaii (HIMB) and the other at the University of California Santa Barbara National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). The specific objectives of the workshop are to:
1. Define current and future (5-15 years) scientific challenges in the field
2. Summarize data and cyber-infrastructure constraints that prevent these challenges being realized
3. Collate current community data and modeling resources and their locations
4. Identify and recommend data infrastructure that could facilitate rapidly addressing the scientific challenges in the field
The coral reef research community is multidisciplinary and the data on reefs is diverse and complex, crossing biological scales from genes to ecosystems, temporal scales from nanoseconds to millennia, and spatial scales from nanometers to kilometers. The challenge is to integrate across these data sources to identify patterns and relationships that rapidly improve our understanding of coral reefs systems. This effort has been hindered to date by the lack of tools to accomplish this and ineffective means of sharing data or collaborating. This project will support workshops that engage the coral reef community to 1) develop a common vision of the grand science challenges in the field 2) highlight how data cyber-infrastructure needs will integrate the complex datasets and potentially facilitate rapid progress in key areas of coral reefs ecosystem science and 3) emphasize the value of collaboration and data sharing as a first step to changing and improving the way coral reef scientists support each other and advance the field.
As ecosystem engineers, corals provide the nutritional, economic, and structural basis of an ecosystem worth billions of dollars annually. This workshop proposal convenes the coral reef community and will address how cyber-infrastructure can inform coral reef systems science. The latter will ultimately accelerate understanding of reef ecosystems, broaden the scope of the questions that can be asked and build capacity to predict how these societally relevant and fragile ecosystems will face the challenges of climate change and human development. The workshops will also be attended by at least 4 postdocs and represents a significant professional development opportunity for these individuals. Results will be disseminated on the EarthCube website, the NCEAS website, and the HIMB website making them broadly accessible to the science, education and the public. The product from the proposed endeavor will be a report to NSF EarthCube summarizing the discussion for each of these objectives that will serve to define and align the needs across the Geosciences and help prioritize EarthCube activities. There is also an opportunity to use the results to develop a manuscript that articulates how cyber-infrastructure can address the science challenges facing the coral reef community and facilitate a systems level science agenda. Such a product could have high value in both the science funding and policy realm.
