How might we use collaborative science to advance the knowledge of marine ecosystems and species?
Marine ecosystems and their diverse species play a vital role in our lives. They regulate the Earth’s climate and are a primary source of food for billions of people. They support numerous economic activities and provide livelihoods for coastal communities around the world.
However, from plankton — the fabric of the ocean — to fisheries, our knowledge of species and ecosystems remains difficult to analyze with integrative approaches. With your help, we can hack available data to address important knowledge gaps.
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How could you tackle this challenge? Here are some ideas for inspiration. Using the resources provided across the Blue-Cloud Virtual Research Environment (including those available in:
- VLab “Plankton Genomics”
- VLab “Global Fisheries Atlas”
- “Ecosystem-level Essential Ocean Variables Workbench” VLab
You could:
- Map the geographical distribution of important genomic pathways within small planktonic organisms from genomic data.
- Map the geographical distribution of key life history traits of planktonic organisms, accessible from imaging data.
- Overlay planktonic organism data with fisheries data on a particular area (e.g., a water area) and compare their time-dependent data (e.g., increases in phytoplankton or zooplankton preceding increases in the corresponding stocks in these areas).
