Beyond ecosystem modeling: A roadmap to community cyberinfrastructure for ecological data-model integration

Istem Fer; Anthony K Gardella; Alexey N Shiklomanov; Eleanor E Campbell; Elizabeth M Cowdery; Martin G De Kauwe; Ankur Desai; Matthew J Duveneck; Joshua B Fisher; Katherine D Haynes; Forrest M Hoffman; Miriam R Johnston; Rob Kooper; David S LeBauer; Joshua Mantooth; William J Parton; Benjamin Poulter; Tristan Quaife; Ann Raiho; Kevin Schaefer; Shawn P Serbin; James Simkins; Kevin R Wilcox; Toni Viskari; Michael C Dietze

doi:10.1111/gcb.15409

Beyond ecosystem modeling: A roadmap to community cyberinfrastructure for ecological data-model integration

Glob Chang Biol. 2021 Jan;27(1):13-26. doi: 10.1111/gcb.15409. Epub 2020 Nov 6.

Authors

Istem Fer¹, Anthony K Gardella^{2

3}, Alexey N Shiklomanov⁴, Eleanor E Campbell⁵, Elizabeth M Cowdery², Martin G De Kauwe^{6

7

8}, Ankur Desai⁹, Matthew J Duveneck¹⁰, Joshua B Fisher¹¹, Katherine D Haynes¹², Forrest M Hoffman^{13

14}, Miriam R Johnston¹⁵, Rob Kooper¹⁶, David S LeBauer¹⁷, Joshua Mantooth¹⁸, William J Parton¹⁹, Benjamin Poulter⁴, Tristan Quaife²⁰, Ann Raiho²¹, Kevin Schaefer²², Shawn P Serbin²³, James Simkins²⁴, Kevin R Wilcox²⁵, Toni Viskari¹, Michael C Dietze²

Affiliations

¹ Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland.
² Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
³ School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁴ Biospheric Sciences Laboratory (618), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
⁵ Earth Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.
⁶ ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁷ Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁸ Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
⁹ Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
¹⁰ Harvard Forest, Harvard University, Petersham, MA, USA.
¹¹ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
¹² Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
¹³ Computational Earth Sciences Group and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁶ NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
¹⁷ College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
¹⁸ The Fulton School at St. Albans, St. Albans, MO, USA.
¹⁹ Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
²⁰ UK National Centre for Earth Observation and Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
²¹ Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
²² National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
²³ Brookhaven National Laboratory, Environmental and Climate Sciences Department, Upton, NY, USA.
²⁴ University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
²⁵ Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA.

Abstract

In an era of rapid global change, our ability to understand and predict Earth's natural systems is lagging behind our ability to monitor and measure changes in the biosphere. Bottlenecks to informing models with observations have reduced our capacity to fully exploit the growing volume and variety of available data. Here, we take a critical look at the information infrastructure that connects ecosystem modeling and measurement efforts, and propose a roadmap to community cyberinfrastructure development that can reduce the divisions between empirical research and modeling and accelerate the pace of discovery. A new era of data-model integration requires investment in accessible, scalable, and transparent tools that integrate the expertise of the whole community, including both modelers and empiricists. This roadmap focuses on five key opportunities for community tools: the underlying foundations of community cyberinfrastructure; data ingest; calibration of models to data; model-data benchmarking; and data assimilation and ecological forecasting. This community-driven approach is a key to meeting the pressing needs of science and society in the 21st century.

Keywords: accessibility; benchmarking; community cyberinfrastructure; data; data assimilation; ecosystem models; interoperability; reproducibility.

MeSH terms

Ecosystem*
Forecasting
Models, Theoretical*

Abstract

MeSH terms

Grants and funding