The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx)

Climate change is a world-wide threat to biodiversity and ecosystem structure, functioning and services. To understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms, and to predict the consequences for nature and people, we urgently need better understanding of the direction and magnitude of climate change impacts across the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. An increasing number of climate change studies are creating new opportunities for meaningful and high-quality generalizations and improved process understanding. However, significant challenges exist related to data availability and/or compatibility across studies, compromising opportunities for data re-use, synthesis and upscaling. Many of these challenges relate to a lack of an established 'best practice' for measuring key impacts and responses. This restrains our current understanding of complex processes and mechanisms in terrestrial ecosystems related to climate change. To overcome these challenges, we collected best-practice methods emerging from major ecological research networks and experiments, as synthesized by 115 experts from across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Our handbook contains guidance on the selection of response variables for different purposes, protocols for standardized measurements of 66 such response variables and advice on data management. Specifically, we recommend a minimum subset of variables that should be collected in all climate change studies to allow data re-use and synthesis, and give guidance on additional variables critical for different types of synthesis and upscaling. The goal of this community effort is to facilitate awareness of the importance and broader application of standardized methods to promote data re-use, availability, compatibility and transparency. We envision improved research practices that will increase returns on investments in individual research projects, facilitate second-order research outputs and create opportunities for collaboration across scientific communities. Ultimately, this should significantly improve the quality and impact of the science, which is required to fulfil society's needs in a changing world.Peer reviewe

The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx)

1. Climate change is a world‐wide threat to biodiversity and ecosystem structure, functioning and services. To understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms, and to predict the consequences for nature and people, we urgently need better understanding of the direction and magnitude of climate change impacts across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum. An increasing number of climate change studies are creating new opportunities for meaningful and high‐quality generalizations and improved process understanding. However, significant challenges exist related to data availability and/or compatibility across studies, compromising opportunities for data re‐use, synthesis and upscaling. Many of these challenges relate to a lack of an established ‘best practice’ for measuring key impacts and responses. This restrains our current understanding of complex processes and mechanisms in terrestrial ecosystems related to climate change. 2. To overcome these challenges, we collected best‐practice methods emerging from major ecological research networks and experiments, as synthesized by 115 experts from across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Our handbook contains guidance on the selection of response variables for different purposes, protocols for standardized measurements of 66 such response variables and advice on data management. Specifically, we recommend a minimum subset of variables that should be collected in all climate change studies to allow data re‐use and synthesis, and give guidance on additional variables critical for different types of synthesis and upscaling. The goal of this community effort is to facilitate awareness of the importance and broader application of standardized methods to promote data re‐use, availability, compatibility and transparency. We envision improved research practices that will increase returns on investments in individual research projects, facilitate second‐order research outputs and create opportunities for collaboration across scientific communities. Ultimately, this should significantly improve the quality and impact of the science, which is required to fulfil society's needs in a changing world

Undersea Natural Hazards

This special issue of Oceanography takes a look at a variety of undersea natural hazards—hazards resulting from natural processes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and landslides. These undersea natural hazards are generally more difficult to assess than those on land because of the challenges and expense of working in the ocean. Seafloor monitoring networks, deep drilling of fault zones, new computational methods, high-resolution sonar imaging, and paleoseismology, among other technologies and strategies, are all shedding new light on hazard risk and assessment around the globe

Oceanography's Electronic Editions— Users, Please Comment!

Starting with the June 2012 issue of Oceanography, The Oceanography Society has offered full electronic editions of the magazine free to members through Qmags (http://www.qmags.com), while also maintaining open access to individual articles on its website (http://tos.org/oceanography/ issues/archive.html). We are pleased at the relatively high percentage of TOS members, 35% to 45%, who access the electronic editions, though that figure doesn't tell us how many people actually paged through, let alone read, any particular articles. Most of these users download the full PDF or view the magazine in a browser, in roughly equal proportions. What is surprising, however, is how few people download the iPad version of any issue (generally around eight, give or take), and virtually no one accesses the Android version (two to three for most issues)

Three Examples of Failure… Or at Least They Thought So

Three women in their fifties who received their doctoral degrees from the same oceanographic institution within a few years of each other recently reunited at a conference. One is a leading researcher, one is the CEO of a scientific company, and the other is president of a small business specializing in geoscience communication. They hadn't been together for nearly 20 years, and understandably spent some time catching up on their careers, with a peppering of family. As the conversation progressed, first one, then the other, then the third announced that earlier in her career, she had felt she was a failure. The researcher had thought that she was a failure because she never earned the title of professor. The CEO had thought that she was a failure because she left the geosciences. The small business owner had thought that she was a failure because she left research.By most objective measures, these three women have had successful careers. How could it be that they all had felt like failures? There are no data to suggest that this sense of failure is unique to women or that this particular oceanographic institution fails to properly mentor its students, male and female. It's unclear how pervasive this feeling of failure is among young ocean science PhDs who are not professors, but it is hard to imagine that any of their mentors ever sensed these women's feelings of failure at the time. Importantly, those mentors undoubtedly now look at these past students as very successful peers in a complex world.The real point here is that success in the sciences can take on more forms than young scientists with little life experience can anticipate. Maturity can possibly be characterized as the ability to define your own success—and it only comes with experience. These three women are excellent role models. They all consciously pursued career paths that were best suited to their skills, personalities, and personal circumstances. Their work—and the larger scientific community—has benefited from their rigorous doctoral training, even if none if them is addressed as "professor." Their work is challenging and intellectually stimulating. The job opportunities they have had over the course of theirs careers were, in large part, due to the intellectual foundations and research networks they started building during graduate school.It is critical that oceanographic institutions embrace and mentor their graduates, often the majority, who seek or end up in careers outside of academia. We need to stop using the ever-so-slightly disparaging term "alternate career" to describe the array of important pathways taken by this group, for our society needs scientifically trained minds working on all facets of our future. (See Oceanography's "Career Profiles" section for some good examples.) The next generation of students who follow the diverse paths that these women followed should be treated like—and should feel like—successes

The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx)

Climate change is a world‐wide threat to biodiversity and ecosystem structure, functioning and services. To understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms, and to predict the consequences for nature and people, we urgently need better understanding of the direction and magnitude of climate change impacts across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum. An increasing number of climate change studies are creating new opportunities for meaningful and high‐quality generalizations and improved process understanding. However, significant challenges exist related to data availability and/or compatibility across studies, compromising opportunities for data re‐use, synthesis and upscaling. Many of these challenges relate to a lack of an established ‘best practice’ for measuring key impacts and responses. This restrains our current understanding of complex processes and mechanisms in terrestrial ecosystems related to climate change. To overcome these challenges, we collected best‐practice methods emerging from major ecological research networks and experiments, as synthesized by 115 experts from across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Our handbook contains guidance on the selection of response variables for different purposes, protocols for standardized measurements of 66 such response variables and advice on data management. Specifically, we recommend a minimum subset of variables that should be collected in all climate change studies to allow data re‐use and synthesis, and give guidance on additional variables critical for different types of synthesis and upscaling. The goal of this community effort is to facilitate awareness of the importance and broader application of standardized methods to promote data re‐use, availability, compatibility and transparency. We envision improved research practices that will increase returns on investments in individual research projects, facilitate second‐order research outputs and create opportunities for collaboration across scientific communities. Ultimately, this should significantly improve the quality and impact of the science, which is required to fulfil society's needs in a changing world

Introduction to Frontiers in Ocean Observing

ISSN:1042-8275ISSN:2377-617