Building Cyberinfrastructure for Transdisciplinary Research and Visualization of the Long-Term Human Ecodynamics of the North Atlantic

Project description

In order to understand large-scale and long-term ecological and social change, such as vulnerability and adaptation to ongoing climate change, access to diverse and interdisciplinary datasets is needed to understand both the environmental and cultural drivers of these complex processes. For example, research on the long-term sustainability of Arctic environments and communities requires compiling data from over thousands of square miles, hundreds of years, and multiple disciplines, from climatology to archaeology to folklore. In most cases, datasets exist to be able to address these questions, but it remains difficult to find these data, make them interoperable, and analyze and visualize them in new and meaningful ways without extensive planning, thus restricting the ability to address these questions. The complexity of datasets of this scale presents a unique challenge to create a data management system that results in the interoperability and accessibility of data. Investing in a comprehensive data management system provides the opportunity to integrate collaborators and data from the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, thus providing the opportunity for a holistic approach to long-term human ecodynamics in the context of rapid social and environmental change and for the creation of digital tools for expanded capacity to do global change research and engage other users, such as the general public, students, and indigenous populations.

This project will solidify a developing multidisciplinary community of archaeologists, climate scientists, humanists, and local communities through a series of planning workshops with a focus on the development of cyberinfrastructure to study the long-term human ecodynamics of North Atlantic, a region that is especially vulnerable to ongoing climate and environmental change. Ongoing activities of this project will benefit sustainability science, integration of archaeology, local and traditional knowledge, cross-disciplinary research, and the education of K-12, college, and graduate students. The ultimate goal of this project is to transform the accessibility and utility of data collected over multiple decades by multiple disciplines, and across hundreds of thousands of square miles. These data will be widely available and shared with researchers and other users both in the North Atlantic and beyond. The lessons learned in this regionally focused collaboration in the North Atlantic will be applied widely to other regions of the world through the established research networks named in the proposal, as well as data management networks, including the Research Data Alliance and the NSF Arctic-Antarctic Data Coordination Network, through ongoing reports and social networks. The networking of these the research team offers a unique opportunity to conduct genuinely transformative, collaborative work to connect natural science, social science, environmental humanities, local and traditional knowledge, innovative data management, visualization, and direct involvement of northern communities in order to address the cultural and environmental drivers of the long-term human ecodynamics of the North Atlantic.