Big data and the future for ecology

Background/Question/Methods

The societal need for sound ecological science has escalated alongside the rise of the information age and “big data” across all sectors of society, presenting unprecedented opportunities for advancing science and informing resource management. The era of big data need not be propelled only by “big science” - the term used to describe large-scale efforts that have had mixed success in the individual-driven culture of ecology. Collectively, ecologists already have big data to contribute to the scientific effort, but many simply fail to contribute. 

Results/Conclusions

The vast majority of ecological research projects are relatively small independent efforts, and a survey of random selected projects reveals what most ecologists already intuitively know – ecologists are not making their data publicly available. In a random survey of federally funded American projects in the past decade, we were able to discover publicly available ecological data for only 8%. An encouraging finding was that genetic data resulting from these studies were readily discoverable regardless of journal policies in which associated publications appeared, suggesting that a culture shift first initiated by journal requirements has successfully resulted in data sharing as the default position for those publishing with genetic data. The public archive of scientific data has been transformative for many other disciplines already, from genetics to geosciences. We encourage ecologists to join the larger scientific community in global efforts to address major scientific and societal problems, by bringing our distributed data to the table and harnessing its collective power. The scientists who bring the information forward will be at the forefront of socially relevant science. Will they be ecologists?