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Transforming 150 years of scientific observations of the Woods Hole Marine Region into a platform for new inquiry

• Why here?• Why now?• Why MBL?• For what?• For whom?

• Consolidate 150 years of data into a knowledge platform

• Extend with a new generation of scientific surveys

Why here?

Pappalardo et. al, 2015

Location, location location!!

The Woods Hole Marine Region

Thousands of papers, surveys, specimens, inventories from 1825 through 2015. View here.

Over 150 years and 800+ publications (and growing)

Combination of phylogenetic scope and historic depth is unparalleled

Woods Hole Marine Region

Long Term Physical and Chemical data

Physical data

Buzzards Bay Coalition-MBL Water Quality Measurement Stations

A platform supporting new inter-disciplinary research and education

Data

Why Now?

Informatics plays a role

The Timing is Right

Asynchronous maturity across domains

Organizational domains in biology and their associated informatics disciplines.

Multi-disciplinary data integration at scale is now possible

“This is not an easy endeavor because any such synthesis needs to be broadly multidisciplinary and integrative (Whitham et al., 2006). And yet the potential pay offs are large given that genetic variation across plant and animal systems can have extended consequences at the population, community and ecosystem levels. “

This emergent capacity allows new questions to be asked and addressed

Integrated

This presents new opportunities for the MBL

Integrated informatics supports a new generation of multi-disciplinary science and leverages our rich legacy. Not possible 10 years ago. It’s new

and we know how to do it!

Interoperability Beyond Biology = Opportunity

Access to services, data, and expertise at scale and across distancesInteroperable across disciplines

Interoperability Beyond Biology = Opportunity

Global Biodiversity Data Networks

940K data records for Woods Hole region

Taxonomic Name Services

For What?

Not just a time-sensitive list of species but an atlas showing known distributions and ranges. Not just a nice to have. The basis for “we need to get better at this” – Stevens 11 July

A biodiversity atlas for the Woods Hole region

1 publication 25K records2500 species

Assist identifying new model species; supports refined ecological modeling. Example: Phenology profiles support climate change inquiry through time-dependent seasonal changes. Currently a focus of a WHOI 2015 proposal.

Rich Ecological Species Profiles

Extracted physical, intra- and inter-species interactions support refined ecological models and the identification of novel model marine species.

Rich Ecological Graph

New products and Services

Discovery starts with

“What’s this?”What do we know about it?

With this rich legacy – new surveys should be a no-brainer.

A Platform – Ready to Extend

For Whom?

For Students

For The Public-At-Large

For Investigators

LabNet / NAML

For New Collaborations/Partnerships

Wider engagement opportunities with UC and National Association of Marine Laboratories