Data Descriptor: Australia’s continental-scale acoustic tracking database and its automated quality control process

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ applies to the metadata files made available in this article.Our ability to predict species responses to environmental changes relies on accurate records of animal movement patterns. Continental-scale acoustic telemetry networks are increasingly being established worldwide, producing large volumes of information-rich geospatial data. During the last decade, the Integrated Marine Observing System’s Animal Tracking Facility (IMOS ATF) established a permanent array of acoustic receivers around Australia. Simultaneously, IMOS developed a centralised national database to foster collaborative research across the user community and quantify individual behaviour across a broad range of taxa. Here we present the database and quality control procedures developed to collate 49.6 million valid detections from 1891 receiving stations. This dataset consists of detections for 3,777 tags deployed on 117 marine species, with distances travelled ranging from a few to thousands of kilometres. Connectivity between regions was only made possible by the joint contribution of IMOS infrastructure and researcher-funded receivers. This dataset constitutes a valuable resource facilitating meta-analysis of animal movement, distributions, and habitat use, and is important for relating species distribution shifts with environmental covariates

SERVIR West Africa 2024 Training Program on Data Stewardship and the CoreTrustSeal Requirements: Session 5, R03 Requirement

When preparing an application for CoreTrustSeal Certification, comparing the repository's responses among each of the requirements can be helpful for identifying capabilities of the repository that could be described and for ensuring consistency among the responses to the requirements. CoreTrustSeal requirement R03, Continuity of Service, provides an opportunity for the repository to describe how it plans to sustain its services over time, including plans for sustaining such services in the event that funding is discontinued

The marine soundscape of the Perth Canyon

The Perth Canyon is a submarine canyon off Rottnest Island in Western Australia. It is rich in biodiversity in general, and important as a feeding and resting ground for great whales on migration. Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) has moorings in the Perth Canyon monitoring its acoustical, physical and biological oceanography. Data from these moorings, as well as weather data from a near-by Bureau of Meteorology weather station on Rottnest Island and ship traffic data from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority were correlated to characterise and quantify the marine soundscape between 5 and 3000. Hz, consisting of its geophony, biophony and anthrophony. Overall, biological sources are a strong contributor to the soundscape at the IMOS site, with whales dominating seasonally at low (15-100. Hz) and mid frequencies (200-400. Hz), and fish or invertebrate choruses dominating at high frequencies (1800-2500. Hz) at night time throughout the year. Ships contribute significantly to the 8-100. Hz band at all times of the day, all year round, albeit for a few hours at a time only. Wind-dependent noise is significant at 200-3000. Hz; winter rains are audible underwater at 2000-3000. Hz. We discuss how passive acoustic data can be used as a proxy for ocean weather. Passive acoustics is an efficient way of monitoring animal visitation times and relative densities, and potential anthropogenic influences

Coastal Mooring Observing Networks and Their Data Products: Recommendations for the Next Decade

Instrumented moorings (hereafter referred to as moorings), which are anchored buoys or an anchored configuration of instruments suspended in the water column, are highly valued for their ability to host a variety of interchangeable oceanographic and meteorological sensors. This flexibility makes them a useful technology for meeting end user and science-driven requirements. Overall, societal needs related to human health, safety, national security, and economic prosperity in coastal areas are met through the availability of continuous data from coastal moorings and other complementary observing platforms within the Earth-observing system. These data streams strengthen the quality and accuracy of data products that inform the marine transportation industry, the tourism industry, fisheries, the military, public health officials, coastal and emergency managers, educators, and research scientists, among many others. Therefore, it is critical to sustain existing observing system networks, especially during this time of extreme environmental variability and change. Existing fiscal and operational challenges affecting the sustainability of observing networks will likely continue into the next decade, threatening the quality of downstream data and information products – especially those used for long-term monitoring, planning, and decision-making. This paper describes the utility of coastal moorings as part of an integrated coastal observing system, with an emphasis on stakeholder engagement to inform observing requirements and to ensure data products are tailored to user needs. We provide 10 recommendations for optimizing moorings networks, and thus downstream data products, to guide regional planners, and network operators: 1.Develop strategies to increase investment in coastal mooring networks2.Collect stakeholder priorities through targeted and continuous stakeholder engagements3.Include complementary systems and emerging technologies in implementation planning activities4.Expand and sustain water column ecosystem moorings in coastal locations5.Coordinate with operators and data managers across geographic scales6.Standardize and integrate data management best practices7.Provide open access to data8.Promote environmental health and operational safety stewardship and regulatory compliance9.Develop coastal mooring observing network performance metrics10.Routinely monitor and assess the design of coastal mooring network

Technologies for a FAIRer use of Ocean Best Practices

The publication and dissemination of best practices in ocean observing is pivotal for multiple aspects of modern marine science, including cross-disciplinary interoperability, improved reproducibility of observations and analyses, and training of new practitioners. Often, best practices are not published in a scientific journal and may not even be formally documented, residing solely within the minds of individuals who pass the information along through direct instruction. Naturally, documenting best practices is essential to accelerate high-quality marine science; however, documentation in a drawer has little impact. To enhance the application and development of best practices, we must leverage contemporary document handling technologies to make best practices discoverable, accessible, and interlinked, echoing the logic of the FAIR data principles [1]

2011 Strategic roadmap for Australian research infrastructure

The 2011 Roadmap articulates the priority research infrastructure areas of a national scale (capability areas) to further develop Australia’s research capacity and improve innovation and research outcomes over the next five to ten years. The capability areas have been identified through considered analysis of input provided by stakeholders, in conjunction with specialist advice from Expert Working Groups   It is intended the Strategic Framework will provide a high-level policy framework, which will include principles to guide the development of policy advice and the design of programs related to the funding of research infrastructure by the Australian Government. Roadmapping has been identified in the Strategic Framework Discussion Paper as the most appropriate prioritisation mechanism for national, collaborative research infrastructure. The strategic identification of Capability areas through a consultative roadmapping process was also validated in the report of the 2010 NCRIS Evaluation. The 2011 Roadmap is primarily concerned with medium to large-scale research infrastructure. However, any landmark infrastructure (typically involving an investment in excess of $100 million over five years from the Australian Government) requirements identified in this process will be noted. NRIC has also developed a ‘Process to identify and prioritise Australian Government landmark research infrastructure investments’ which is currently under consideration by the government as part of broader deliberations relating to research infrastructure. NRIC will have strategic oversight of the development of the 2011 Roadmap as part of its overall policy view of research infrastructure

A compilation of global bio-optical in situ data for ocean-colour satellite applications – version three

A global in-situ data set for validation of ocean-colour products from the ESA Ocean Colour Climate Change Initiative (OC-CCI) is presented. This version of the compilation, starting in 1997, now extends to 2021, which is important for the validation of the most recent satellite optical sensors such as Sentinel 3B OLCI and NOAA-20 VIIRS. The data set comprises in-situ observations of the following variables: spectral remote-sensing reflectance, concentration of chlorophyll-a, spectral inherent optical properties, spectral diffuse attenuation coefficient and total suspended matter. Data were obtained from multi-project archives acquired via open internet services, or from individual projects, acquired directly from data providers. Methodologies were implemented for homogenisation, quality control and merging of all data. Minimal changes were made on the original data, other than conversion to a standard format, elimination of some points after quality control and averaging of observations that were close in time and space. The result is a merged table available in text format. Overall, the size of the data set grew with 151,673 rows, with each row representing a unique station in space and time (cf 136,250 rows in previous version; Valente et al., 2019). Observations of remote-sensing reflectance increased to 68,641 (cf 59,781 in previous version; Valente et al., 2019). There was also a near tenfold increase in chlorophyll data since 2016. Metadata of each in situ measurement (original source, cruise or experiment, principal investigator) are included in the final table. By making the metadata available, provenance is better documented, and it is also possible to analyse each set of data separately. The compiled data are available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.941318 (Valente et al., 2022)

Global Ocean Science Report

The Global Ocean Science Report (GOSR) assesses for the first time the status and trends in ocean science capacity around the world. The report offers a global record of who, how, and where ocean science is conducted: generating knowledge, helping to protect ocean health, and empowering society to support sustainable ocean management in the framework of the United Nations Agenda 2030.The GOSR identifies and quantifies the key elements of ocean science at the national, regional and global scales, including workforce, infrastructure and publications. This is the first collective attempt to systematically highlight opportunities as well as capacity gaps  to advance international collaboration in ocean science and technology. This report is a resource for policy makers, academics and other stakeholders seeking to harness the potential of ocean science to address global challenges.A comprehensive view of ocean science capacities at the national and global levels takes us closer to developing the global ocean science knowledge needed to ensure a healthy, sustainable ocean.The Global Ocean Science Report (GOSR) assesses for the first time the status and trends in ocean science capacity around the world. The report offers a global record of who, how, and where ocean science is conducted: generating knowledge, helping to protect ocean health, and empowering society to support sustainable ocean management in the framework of the United Nations Agenda 2030. The GOSR identifies and quantifies the key elements of ocean science at the national, regional and global scales, including workforce, infrastructure and publications. This is the first collective attempt to systematically highlight opportunities as well as capacity gaps to advance international collaboration in ocean science and technology. This report is a resource for policy makers, academics and other stakeholders seeking to harness the potential of ocean science to address global challenges. A comprehensive view of ocean science capacities at the national and global levels takes us closer to developing the global ocean science knowledge needed to ensure a healthy, sustainable ocean

Global Ocean Science Report: The Current Status of Ocean Science around the World

The IOC-UNESCO Global Ocean Science Report (GOSR) aims to provide a status report on ocean science. It identifies and quantifies the elements that drive the productivity and performance of ocean science, including workforce, infrastructure, resources, networks and outputs. The report is intended to facilitate international ocean science cooperation and collaboration. It helps to identify gaps in science organization and capacity and develop options to optimize the use of scientific resources and advance ocean science and technology by sharing expertise and facilities, promoting capacity-building and transferring marine technology. As the first consolidated assessment of global ocean science, the GOSR assists the science-policy interface and supports managers, policy-makers, governments and donors, as well as scientists beyond the ocean community. The GOSR offers decision-makers an unprecedented tool to identify gaps and opportunities to advance international collaboration in ocean science and technology and harness its potential to meet societal needs, address global challenges and drive sustainable development for all