Data Discovery Science Competition

 

Come Find the Data You Need!

Grow your skills and your data resources in the Data Discovery Science Competition at DataDiscoveryStudio.org

Data Discovery Studio is built to help scientists find data. It hosts records for over 1.6 million datasets and resources from over 40 repositories, and continues to grow. Individuals, classes, and sci-tech teams can compete in two categories:

(1) Build a shareable Collection of datasets from existing resources, and add links to other datasets and resources in other repositories. We show you how!

(2) Modify existing Jupyter Notebooks or create your own to explore a data type of interest. Guidance provided!

Find details at bit.ly/ddscompete or jump in and start exploring at DataDiscoveryStudio.org – enter by May 1, 2019.

Please share broadly! We built this NSF-funded EarthCube gateway for you, want it to be useful, and eagerly welcome your feedback.

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Note to coral reef scientists: the site already includes over 16,600 records of coral reef datasets and resources – enough to begin a select collection of your own to share with collaborators, and point to more.

More Details:

Both competition categories contribute to science. (1) Collections will gather and tag resources, including datasets, with a focus you choose for research or community use. (2) Jupyter Notebooks will help develop workflows for datasets with a common theme or structure. Both areas will help address real science questions, share results and resources with others, and will help improve the gateway for future users. The competition is suitable for individual, team, or class entry.

DDStudio’s strongest holdings in datasets and resources are in earth, ocean, atmospheric, hydrologic, geologic, planetary, ecological, and other geoscience domains, broadly defined. Try out a favorite search term at datadiscoverystudio.org – if DDStudio doesn’t have what you need, you can contribute a new link, or point us to repositories to add. DDStudio goes beyond search: some datasets can be explored right on site using example Jupyter Notebooks (e.g., sensor data) – or develop and contribute your own Notebooks.

You can’t win if you don’t enter – show up and represent your domain! bit.ly/ddscompete

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Chasing Coral is now on Netflix – A Powerful Film to See and Share

Coral Bleaching and its Aftermath – a scene from Chasing Coral. Credit: The Ocean Agency – XL Catlin Seaview Survey – Richard Vevers & Christophe Bailhache

Several of the coral reef scientists featured in the film Chasing Coral are CRESCYNT participants, including our PI, Dr Ruth D Gates, and we congratulate and thank them all for their eloquence, passion, deep experience, scientific integrity, and significant intellectual contributions to this powerful film. Chasing Coral‘s producers are making it available free for public screenings, and its focus now is educating audiences and moving people to action.

“It’s not too late for coral reefs…  indeed, for many other ecosystems that are facing challenges from climate change. It’s still possible to reduce the rate at which the climate is changing, and that’s within our power today.” – Dr Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

 

>>>Go to NSF EarthCube or the CRESCYNT website or the blog Masterpost.<<<

Resources for Coral Reef Education – by Judy Lemus

We all recognize that communication and education about science concepts and the process of science is more important than ever.  Fortunately, coral reefs are charismatic ecosystems that inspire much curiosity, concern, and interest from many sectors of society.  While there is no shortage of stunning images and videos online, resources that combine these visuals with robust educational content can be more challenging to identify; they do exist and I’ve put together some of my favorites here. The list is not exhaustive, and we welcome your suggestions for great additions.

EDUCATIONAL WEBSITES. These resources provide educational information about coral reefs across multiple levels and concepts, often using multimedia.

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Coral Reef Ecology Curriculum. The KSLOF has perhaps the most comprehensive website on coral reef ecology. The site is set up as a course with several units and resources with very nice graphics and high quality videos geared specifically for students and teachers. Lessons are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, Ocean Literacy Principles, and Common Core State Standards for K-12, but some of the material could easily be used in a college level course. A major downside to this site is that one must register to use it.

Smithsonian Ocean Portal. The Smithsonian’s website for coral and coral reefs is not as media-rich as the KSLOF, but does have a great deal of scientific information about corals.  Only a couple of lesson plans are offered, but the richness of the content lies in the embedded links to additional images and other stories. The science is backed up with oversight by Smithsonian coral reef biologist Nancy Knowlton.

MarineBio Coral Reefs. The MarineBio website is somewhat of a clearinghouse for other marine bio resources, but the educational content on coral reefs is good quality and quite extensive if you follow the links.  Like the Smithsonian site, there are links to both internal and external resources. The short videos featured throughout the site, generally from outside sources, are particularly engaging.

OTHER WEBSITES WITH EXTENSIVE INFORMATION ABOUT CORAL REEFS

National Ocean Service

NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program

USGS Coral Reef Project

Coral Reef Alliance

Teach Ocean Science

ReefBase

Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Coral Triangle Initiative

Endangered Reefs, Threatened People

Coral Health Atlas

VIDEOS ABOUT CORALS AND CORAL REEFS. There are loads of videos of corals and coral reefs on the web; these excellent examples incorporate educational content.

Catlin Seaview

Chasing Coral (available through Netflix)

Climate Change: Coral Reefs on the Edge

Exploring the Coral Reef: Learn about Oceans for Kids

Corals Under Confocal

Coral bleaching caused by heating water (time-lapse)

Life Noggin – What Happens if All the Coral Dies? (animation)

Coral Bleaching Animation – HHMI BioInteractive Video (animation)

Coral Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef (animation)

SCIENCE NEWS SITES. These science news websites regularly post stories on coral reefs.

ScienceDaily

LiveScience

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Thanks to Dr. Judy Lemus for this cream-of-the-crop list. Judy is a Faculty Specialist in Science Education at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology; fortunately for us, she is also the Education Node Leader for CRESCYNT. You can download Judy’s list in pdf format.

>>>Go to NSF EarthCube or the CRESCYNT website or the blog Masterpost.<<<

CRESCYNT Toolbox – Open Science Framework supports reproducible science

The Open Science Framework, or OSF (osf.io) is a free and open source platform for supporting reproducible science. It’s designed more for documenting work than for streamlining work. It’s potentially a useful place to host a messy spread-out collaborative research project partly because of the add-ons it can connect with, (1) for storage: Amazon S3, Box, Dataverse, Dropbox, figshare, Google Drive, and GitHub, and (2) for references: Mendeley and Zotero. OSF also comes with a dashboard, a wiki, email notifications for your group, OSF file storage with built-in version control, data licensing background and assignment capability, ability to apply permission controls, and ability to make projects and components either private or public. Projects that one chooses to make public can be assigned DOIs (which can be transferred if you move your project elsewhere).

Aside from its primary role as a place to host research documentation and collaboration, OSF has also been used to teach classes in open science and reproducibility, and as a location to host conference products such as presentations and posters.

OSF is not a perfect platform for science – that elusive creature does not yet exist – but it’s a robust start with its ability to integrate other resources you may already be using, gets extra points for being free and open source, and could definitely be worth the learning curve of using with a next project. It continues to be improved over time, and how will we know what to ask of a platform if we don’t wrestle a bit with what’s already been built?

Learn more at the Open Science Framework FAQs and OSF Guides –
or on YouTube (where everyone seems to learn new software these days):
+ Getting Started with the OSF (2 mins) (start here!) –
+ Most recent “OSF 101” intro webinar (1 hour) –
+ Deep dive into the OSF (1 hour) (thumbs up!) –
+ and more at OSF’s YouTube channel.

If you try it out, please let us know what you think!

Update: OSF now also connects with Bitbucket and ownCloud. See current Add-ons.

>>>Go to the blog Masterpost or the CRESCYNT website or NSF EarthCube.<<<