PAGES Magazine articles
Estelle Razanatsoa1, Y. Ait Brahim2 and N. Schafstall3
Environmental change is being experienced worldwide; its extent and variation, however, are still poorly documented. In order to better understand the present-day environmental change and to predict the impact on ecosystems of climate and human social behavior, it is important to learn about the natural variability of Earth’s ecosystems and the mechanisms behind these changes. Paleo research provides information on the causal factors and the succession of environmental and climatic events at annual to millennial time scales. However, many paleo studies are descriptive and provide little practical application from the socio-economic point of view. Several ideas might help highlighting paleo research as a useful tool to solve problems of socio-economic importance.
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Graph of the interactions between the different actors for developing better strategies to highlight paleo research as a useful tool to solve present-day problems of socio-economic importance. This graph is an outcome of the breakout discussion during PAGES 3rd Young Scientists Meeting in Spain in May 2017. |
Paleoscientists need to understand the relevance of their research in solving specific present-day problems to enhance the public interest in the discipline. For example, paleoecological records describe how vegetation has changed and responded to various forms of disturbance such as fire or herbivores over time. By unraveling past vegetation patterns, baselines can be set to mark the development of a peatland, a nature reserve or a region. Such baselines are valuable to disentangle challenges of ecosystem degradation, species disappearance and species invasion. Relating those findings from the past with the current issues of ecosystem management would play an important role in positioning paleo research in the domain of conservation.
Communication of paleoscience to the general public and other stakeholders, like contributors of ecosystem services and governments, is also a key strategy to highlight its importance. Often, paleoscientists find it challenging to communicate their results to non-experts due to their complexity. In many cases, people have never met an actual researcher and do not understand the motivations behind paleo research. Therefore, it might be easier to engage with the general public by providing historical, human-related examples of environmental change such as drought or floods, and by showing how paleo research can evaluate their frequency and their probability of return on a longer time scale. However, this approach might not be applicable to socio-economic stakeholders as their interest is centered in tangible results like economic models or cost calculations.
Long-term environmental data could also be used to assess the economic value of ecosystem services. In fact, society is dependent on the services and goods offered by ecosystems and these services are explicitly expressed financially. Paleo research shows the long-term state of these services and goods that allow the assessment of the potential threats and the possibility to evaluate their sustainable use. When presenting their results, paleoscientists need to be aware of the quantifiable information they provided in terms of their monetary value. It is then crucial to associate the paleo data with the monetary assessment of modern analogues through collaboration with stakeholders. For instance, paleo research provides a long-term and large-scale view of the climate variability, as it explains its impact on socio-economic issues. In fact, continental or global data on a longer time scale would be more valuable to decision makers like NGO’s, despite the fact that local case studies are relevant to local stakeholders for their own assessment. In addition, direct cooperation with socio-economical actors would enhance the ability of paleoscientists to interpret their data to solve present-day problems and might promote interdisciplinary projects that serve both research and its direct applications to the society. Since it can be difficult to show the prospective results of a paleo research project, it might even be worth collaborating with marketing or communication specialists to pitch the highlights and benefits of paleo research to all involved socio-economic stakeholders.
Despite current challenges, it is possible to highlight the importance of paleo research in solving present-day socio-economic problems. This could be achieved by understanding the different motivations of the various stakeholders and by adequately crafting the communication for the audience. The overall value of the services and goods should be measured against paleo research, and international and interdisciplinary collaborations should be favored.
affiliationS
1Department of Biological sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa
2Laboratory of Applied Geology and Geo-Environment, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco
3Department of Forest Ecology, Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic
contact
Estelle Razanatsoa: estellebota
gmail.com
Michelle Chaput1 and Manuel Chevalier2
The vision of the future of paleoscience shared by PhD students and postdocs who attended PAGES 3rd Young Scientists Meeting (YSM) in May 2017 centered on five key elements: interdisciplinarity, accessibility, creativity, innovation and progress. All of the top research questions identified could be traced back to these principles and reflected the group’s desire for the field of paleoscience and its community to be barrier-free, engaging and strengthened by international partnerships.
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What issues will the paleoscience community be focusing on during the next ten years? |
Interdisciplinarity was mentioned frequently during group discussions. Many participants asked: how can I combine my research with someone’s work from another field to solve a problem important to paleoscience? How can I build or strengthen collaborations with ecologists, social scientists or statisticians outside of the paleo community? Many participants expressed the need to avoid reinventing the wheel when it came to data analysis. Interdisciplinarity was of particular interest to participants struggling with data-model comparisons. The participants insisted on the importance of combining skills and academic disciplines.
Accessibility was often discussed, but in more ways than one. First, paleo research needs to be more accessible to the general public, and results communicated in a way that is inviting, easy to understand and consistent. The big question was: how best can we accomplish this? How do we get the public and policymakers more interested in our work? How do we highlight the importance of paleo research in the media? Put simply, we need to strengthen the link between science, policy, media, and the public. Second, paleo research needs to be more accessible to paleoscientists! We are all working towards a common goal and proper data sharing needs to be a priority. Initiatives like the PAGES Interactive Activity on Data Stewardship, the Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS), open-access journals like Scientific Data and Open Quaternary, and global databases like the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database (CARD) and the Global Charcoal Database (GCD) are helping to make this possible. Third, paleoscience needs to be integrated into high school curricula. High school graduates can no longer begin university without a basic knowledge of the evolution of the Earth system and the ways paleo data can inform predictions of the future.
Fortunately, participants where not afraid to express their creative side and admit that paleoscience is and should be portrayed as a fun endeavor! After all, curiosity is a feeling that connects all humans regardless of whether or not they are academics. Therefore, we owe it to ourselves and our peers to continuously ask ourselves: how can I pique the interest of someone not as excited about the topic as I am? Among the most popular suggestions were creating apps where paleo data could be viewed and ‘played’ with, and taking a friend or fellow scientist out for a “pint of knowledge” to discuss research in a general way. Creativity powers science, thus the group proposed that creative thinking should be both a personal and collective priority over the next ten years.
With creativity comes innovation. Many discussions focused on innovative research topics, including geogenomics, pollen sensitivity to ultraviolet light, ancient DNA, and multiproxy reconstructions, and their importance to the evolution of paleoscience over the next ten years. Participants agreed that the next suite of innovative projects would likely require state-of-the-art methods and multidimensional thinking. The most pressing questions seemed to be: are Bayesian methods preferable to the Frequentist approach for paleo data analysis? How do we address no-analogue climates and communities? How can we better incorporate sophisticated statistical and spatiotemporal models in the paleosciences and correct for factors like topography and altitude? How can we better integrate the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?
The discussion culminated in a unanimous desire to drive and maintain progress in the field of paleoscience. This progress should include increased high-resolution climate records from all hemispheres, improved climate sensitivity and time uncertainty studies, refined paleo data-model comparisons, linking marine and terrestrial datasets, identifying and amassing data from key regions currently lacking data, and an overall interdisciplinary approach. The next generation of researchers should combine their expertize, foster successful partnerships at home and abroad, and collectively work towards advancing the field of paleoscience.
affiliationS
1Laboratory for Paleoclimatology and Climatology, Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Ottawa, Canada
2Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
contact
Michelle Chaput: mchaputuottawa.ca
Liv Heinecke1,2, M. Chevalier3, K. Ashastina4,5 and J. Picas6
In today's scientific world, the definition of a successful career is often associated with professorship. This goal is unfortunately only achieved by roughly 0.5-16% of those who pursue a PhD (lifesciencenetwork11.connectedcommunity.org/blogs/leah-cannon/2016/09/15/how-many-phd-graduates-become-professors).
While the percentage varies between scientific domains and countries, this apparent “limited success rate” is an important source of stress for many early-career researchers (ECRs), as illustrated by the vivid discussions that took place during the breakout group sessions organized during PAGES 3rd Young Scientists Meeting (YSM). While most participants acknowledged feeling – or having felt – this pressure, we all agreed that alternative ways outside academia can, and should, lead to equally successful careers. Unfortunately, we also came to the conclusion that our ideas of what these alternative ways might actually be were rather limited.
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Figure 1: Sketch of the mental representation most ECRs have about their career path. |
A large part of this stress or pressure comes from our limited perception of the “outside world”. During the PhD, most of us live in an academic bubble. We become so focused on our daily tasks that we forget about the non-academic world and sometimes even convince ourselves that academia is our only viable option (Fig. 1). This psychological barrier stems from not only a lack of knowledge about other worthwhile job opportunities, but also the stigmatism of choosing what feels like a “second-class” career. A perfect illustration of this came during a YSM discussion about children’s education. Although all members of the breakout group agreed that engaging children in environmental issues early on is critical to educate the next generation, it was also strikingly evident that leaving academia to become a teacher was perceived as a failure for most participants.
Most of us enjoy working in science because it is a challenging job, with short- and long-term objectives that necessitate a large spectrum of competences, such as using/developing technical and analytical skills, collaborating and/or managing people, planning, writing papers, developing projects, etc. But it is important to remember that all these skills are transferable and valuable outside academia.
According to statistics, most ECRs will leave the galaxy of academia, but we can still rotate around it as satellites: data collection and management, logistics for expeditions, scientific journalism, teaching, and the list goes on and on. Leaving academia does not automatically imply leaving science. Opportunities exist in industry, government organizations, consultancy firms and areas like scientific management, communication and education. Possibilities are plentiful, but how do we approach them?
We all have mentors in academia who advise us about the right choices for an academic career. But we also need role models from outside academia. We have not received many insights from predecessors who have already left academia, but we now have the possibility to step in and provide assistance to the future generation. We, i.e. the current generation of ECRs, need to become the academic and non-academic mentors of the next generation of scientists. Those leaving academia within the next years – voluntarily or not – should leave a note about their future whereabouts and not “vanish” from the scene. This could be achieved by gathering a list of successful alternative career paths (e.g. on the PAGES website), by organizing seminars and webinars, structured mentoring programs at universities or even blogging.
Light needs to be shed on the dark areas represented in Figure 1. Having access to this critical information should reduce some pressure from ECRs to aim for academic careers and assist them with finding their own way. This could and should be one of the aims of the planned ECR working group, and the next YSM in 2021 would provide the perfect opportunity to evaluate our progress.
affiliationS
1Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Science, Potsdam, Germany
2Institute for Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam, Germany
3Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
4Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Research Station of Quaternary Palaeontology, Weimar, Germany
5Institute for Systematic Botany, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
6School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
contact
Liv Heinecke: Liv.Heineckeawi.de
Xavier Benito1 and Stella Alexandroff2
What are the benefits for young paleoscientists in creating an early-career researchers working group within the framework of PAGES? This key question for the next generation of researchers was discussed during the breakout sessions at PAGES 3rd Young Scientists Meeting held in Morillo de Tou, Spain, in May 2017.
The goal of such a working group would be to favor cohesion among early-career researchers. This can be achieved through different tools and activities:
Platform
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Eighty international participants attended the YSM in Morillo de Tou, providing a great opportunity to network and discuss research. |
Building a platform for exchange on hard and soft researcher skills is viewed as extremely valuable. It would strengthen collaborations among early-career researchers, promote new science projects and enable early-career researchers to exchange and gain useful knowledge for their future careers. In this context, there is a strong desire to propose workshops and webinars to learn and expand skills, such as database management, specific software, new methodologies, and communication (e.g. practicing talks or how to present a poster). To start with, a skill database of the members’ research backgrounds has been developed to enhance online networking within the early-career community.
Communication
Besides public outreach and science communication, sharing information was also identified as of paramount importance for early-career researchers. In a very competitive post-PhD world, it is essential for early-career scientists to keep themselves updated about research jobs and funding opportunities. PAGES is a bottom-up international organization consisting of numerous working groups. Although early-career researchers are already actively involved in many PAGES working groups, creating a dedicated early-career researchers working group would potentially increase their visibility and offer a new set of opportunities.
Collaborative projects
One of the objectives of PAGES working groups is to address big science questions that cannot be answered by single research teams. In this context, there is huge potential for early-career researchers to initiate collaborative projects, since they are usually deeply involved in their own research (e.g. dissertations). Therefore, they can provide new, fresh ideas and scientific hypotheses, although, being strongly focused, they need to develop collaboration to tackle major scientific questions.
Networking
Many early-career researchers leave the academic sphere for alternative career paths. A dedicated PAGES working group could develop a long-term network with them, to provide mentors outside academia, to identify valuable jobs other than professorships or to liaise with potential stakeholders. An ECR working group may also act as a link between their own centers/universities and regional and global associations to organize conferences and meetings on PAGES-related topics.
Therefore, an early-career researchers working group is in development. The steering committee, with ten members (five PhD students and six postdocs) from six different countries, is currently working on a formal proposal to create a new working group that addresses all the remits mentioned above and investigates how it can contribute to filling research gaps in PAGES sub-disciplines in the long term.
Early-career researchers in past global changes are very welcome to join. Email us (pages.ecngmail.com) or join our online forum (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pages-early-career-scientists) for more details on how to be involved.
affiliationS
1Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
2School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University Wales, UK
contact
Xavier Benito: xbenitogranell2unl.edu
Heather Plumpton1, E. Dearing Crampton-Flood2, E.J. Gowan3, E.P. Dassié4
It is not an easy task for paleoscientists to communicate the relevance of their research to policy makers and funders. However, an increase in catastrophic environmental calamities related to climate change (e.g. landslide, droughts, flooding) demands a response both in terms of policy-making and future governmental decisions. Often, climate change in the recent past was linked to major shifts in human behavior, which masks the relative contribution of humans and nature. For example, the 4.2 ka BP aridification event was so severe that it may have triggered the collapse of several large civilizations (the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia; Gibbons 1993). Compilations of long-term records of past variability can help reduce the uncertainties on past, present and future climate changes, and thus support informed societal decisions. Therefore, policymakers should (and some may argue, must) consider the long-term perspective provided by paleoscience research.
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An animated Guilaume Jouve, from France, explains the relevance of his research. |
Better interaction with funding bodies and policy makers may also glean further information on how scientists can advocate for the relevance of paleo research. If we want politicians to engage with our science, we have to spend time with them and open a dialogue. Of course, this does not necessarily mean joining political demonstrations. In the past, scientists were part of high society – teachers and peers of politicians who could directly influence policy. While that is not the case anymore, it can be discussed if it is possible, or desirable, to replicate this kind of influence today. Scientists still have a duty to shape a debate by interacting with and informing politicians.
Contacting local representation, by email or post, before a bill is passed with focused, short and specific information, can help politicians forge their final decisions, and could be a first step towards establishing a long-term connection. It is extremely important to know one’s audience and frame the communication accordingly, for example by addressing societal concerns such as jobs or water quality. Furthermore, it may be helpful to engage optimistically by suggesting ways in which we can work with politicians to solve a problem.
A lively discussion within the scientific community is about whether scientists should (try to) fit their research into an application-based narrative in line with funding agencies and stakeholder expectations, or whether there are still opportunities to do fundamental basic science, or “science for the sake of science”. Many funding agencies request research proposals, prior to any grant allocation, which demonstrate how the work will benefit society. This approach of research and science completely disregards the fact that fundamental science underpins all application-based science. More generally, funding applications should tell a compelling story that sets the proposal in the broader picture.
The synthesis of important paleoclimate data will enable policy makers to make more informed decisions with respect to climate change mitigation. We stress the need to address societal concerns when communicating to funding bodies, stakeholders and policy makers, so the relevance of paleo research is appreciated by the wider community. We also highlight that advocating paleoclimate science is an exercise dependent on whoever is on the receiving end of the message.
affiliations
1Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, UK
2Department of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
3Paleo-climate Dynamics, Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany
4LOCEAN/IRD, Paris, France
contact
Heather Plumpton: H.Plumptonpgr.reading.ac.uk
references
Heather Plumpton1, Y. Ait Brahim2, E.J. Gowan3 and E.P. Dassié4
Why communicate our science? Aside from our duty to let taxpayers, who largely fund our research, know what their money has been spent on, our motivation to communicate stems mainly from a desire to make a contribution towards a more sustainable world. Given the scale of the environmental challenges facing the planet and human societies today, doing only research is not enough. There is a clear need for us, as scientists, and even more as early-career scientists, to communicate to a wider audience than just our direct peers.
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Marie Eugenia de Porras a member of the Scientific Program Committee from Chile, spreads the YSM message on regional Aragonese television. |
But how do we go about doing that? We can write press releases and hope that journalists will pick up the story. This can be an effective way to reach a wide audience, but control of the story is lost once you put the press release out. Additionally, we can utilize social media by writing blog posts, promoting ourselves and our work through Twitter, or even making YouTube science documentaries. Video media can be an excellent way of making science more accessible to the public, as demonstrated by initiatives such as TED Talks (ted.com).
Engaging with younger generations in science is also very important. For example, going to primary schools and running workshops can be hugely rewarding. However, it is also extremely time consuming to design these activities. Sadly, this time commitment is currently barely recognized or rewarded in terms of career progression. This puts up a significant barrier to early-career scientists doing outreach, as they cannot justify the time commitment in a hyper-competitive job market. Wider recognition of the value of committing time to communicating science to young people is necessary to encourage these activities.
To communicate better to scientific as well as non-scientific audiences, the following suggestions should be considered. Firstly, the art of communication is telling a story. As scientists, we get too easily bogged down in the data, but people need to have an emotional connection to really engage. One way for paleoscientists to do this is to include people in the story, perhaps by talking about and showing images of fieldwork. Secondly, know the audience and keep them in mind throughout. Use the appropriate amount of detail and avoid all jargon. The language barrier must be overcome: it should be adapted to the audience if you don’t want to confuse them. Thirdly, know exactly what you’re trying to communicate - be clear about one or two take-home messages. And finally, respond quickly to communications with journalists and do not pass them on to someone more senior. They will then be more likely to continue contacting you in the future.
Overall, despite the importance of communicating science to a broad range of audiences, there is little provision of formal training. This gap in our education could be filled by workshops or seminars organized by the newly proposed PAGES early-career scientists working group.
affiliations
1Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, UK
2Department of Geology, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco
3Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany
4LOCEAN/IRD, Paris, France
contact
Heather Plumpton: H.Plumptonpgr.reading.ac.uk
Evan J. Gowan1, E.P. Dassié2, Y. Ait Brahim3, M.D. Holloway4, X. Benito5 and N. Kuosmanen6
3rd PAGES Young Scientists Meeting (YSM), Morillo de Tou, Spain, 7-9 May, 2017
Three days prior to the 5th PAGES Open Science Meeting (OSM), 80 ambitious early-career scientists (PhD students and postdoctoral researchers) met in the restored village of Morillo de Tou, Spain. The remote setting in the Pyrenees, the old style buildings constructed of turbidites, and the clear and sunny weather made this place an inspiring location to discuss past climate, environment and human interactions. Despite some grumblings about cold coffee served in small cups, the conference was a high-energy affair that promoted connections.
The YSM meeting featured a tightly packed schedule, including two poster sessions, three oral sessions, workshops, and breakout group discussions. Poster and oral sessions displayed a great variety of topics including geology, oceanography, paleo-climate reconstructions, vegetation dynamics, human-climate interaction, and modeling. The quality of both the research and the presentations were excellent. Several workshops, led by more experienced/senior scientists and experts in the field, provided valuable insights to the topics that are near and dear to early-career researchers, including funding, scientific communication, and data sharing. Breakout groups split off for discussions on seven different topics, including how to advocate for the relevance of paleo-research, career opportunities outside academia, and our perspective of future challenges in our discipline.
Within the PAGES framework, working groups are sustained by a bottom-up approach. One of the key outcomes of this meeting is the desire to create an early-career scientists’ working group within the framework of PAGES. The main idea of this group will be to assist early-career scientists to develop multi-disciplinary approaches to research and build collaborations and skills needed for career enhancement. This working group could provide training in soft skills, such as science communication, as well as technical skills, such as data-handling and the use of specific software. It could also provide a platform to gather, share and discuss information on a variety of subjects. Additional benefits of creating an early-career scientists group will also be to facilitate connections and networking with other international scientific organizations that already have early-career researcher sections established, such as the Future Earth Early Career Researchers Network of Networks or the Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community.
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Figure 1: Blas L. Valero Garcés explains the geological setting of Ainsa, a small town near Morillo de Tou. It was built upon a MIS4 aged river terrace, which formed during the local maximum glacial extent. Image: Niina Kuosmanen. |
Although the meeting was full of science, there was also time to relax and enjoy what Morillo de Tou and the surrounding area had to offer. On the first night, clear skies allowed stargazing with guidance and high-powered telescopes provided by the Huesca Astronomical Association. The event on the second night included traditional Aragonese music and dancing, which showed that we were not only skilled at science, but also at polka! Before heading back to Zaragoza for the OSM, we stopped at the nearby town of Ainsa to learn about the local geology (Fig. 1). The town was built upon a Marine Isotope Stage 4 (MIS4) river terrace, which formed during the peak extent of Quaternary glaciers in the region, overlying Paleogene turbidites.
Finally, attending the YSM provided a valuable opportunity for people at a similar career stage to meet and share their experiences, and also concerns, about being an early-career researcher. Furthermore, the participation of senior scientists at the YSM provided valuable insight into the different possibilities available within a research career. This networking opportunity – with researchers from different fields, institutions, and countries – built important links within a welcoming community immediately prior to the OSM and offered a foundation for long-lasting collaborations.
affiliations
1Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany
2LOCEAN, Université P. et M. Curie, Paris, France
3LAGAGE, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco
4British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK
5Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
6Department of Forest Ecology, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic
contact
Evan J. Gowan: evan.gowanawi.de
Marie-France Loutre
The Young Scientists Meeting (YSM) Scientific Program Committee (SPC) worked for more than a year to prepare an exciting program for the three-day meeting. Four participants from the 2nd PAGES YSM were members of the SPC, in addition to members of PAGES’ Scientific Steering Committee (SSC). We based this program on previous YSMs (Corvallis, USA, 2009 and Goa, India, 2013) and tried to keep their highlights and improve on any weaknesses. We exchanged a lot of emails, shared many documents and held several online meetings in order to finalize the program.
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YSM 2017 participants |
At the YSM, attendees presented their ongoing research and heard from two keynote speakers – SSC members Sheri Fritz (University of Nebraska, USA) and Mike Evans (University of Maryland, USA). Time was also allocated for discussion and networking – we organized social activities, panel discussions and breakout groups.
The committee received more than 200 applications to attend the YSM. It was a heartbreaking task to select the participants from all the excellent applications. The venue could only accommodate a limited number and we wanted to keep the meeting small to favor networking. Thus, 80 participants (38 from Europe, 24 from North America and nine from Africa, South America or Asia) disembarked the buses in Morillo de Tou on Sunday 7 May 2017.
Everything was ready! We (the YSM SPC) were just hoping that everything would run as planned, and that the early-career researchers would be delighted with the program.
The mini section hereafter provides an account of the participants’ experiences during the YSM. They report on what they learned from the many activities and on what they discussed during the meeting. All views are their own and we hope you enjoy their insights.
affiliation
PAGES International Project Office, Bern, Switzerland
contact
Marie-France Loutre: marie-france.loutrepages.unibe.ch
Sandy P. Harrison
Big data has revolutionized science. Cultural and practical issues have limited its impact on paleoecology, despite the field’s long history of data synthesis. We need stakeholder interactions and outside-the-box thinking to maximize scientific benefits in the big data era.
Access to increasingly large quantities of data and enhanced data sharing through open-access databases have revolutionized many areas of science. The huge volume of astronomical observations generated by the Gaia mission have contributed to advances in fundamental physics. The explosion of human genomics data has led to better understanding of the causes of diseases and the development of personalized treatments. Multi-sensor Earth-observation data are being used to understand climate variability better and monitor environmental responses to changes in atmospheric composition, land use and climate. Connecting climate observations with economic data is enabling the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices; connecting climate information with energy-sector data is allowing projections of the response to climate variability to be factored into energy management practice. Thus, the big data revolution is not just about the amount of data or the use of high-powered statistics. It is about data being exploited to answer completely different types of questions from the ones for which they were originally collected.
Paleoenvironmental datasets have a long history, starting with the datasets created by CLIMAP (Climate: Long range Investigation, Mapping and Prediction) and COHMAP (Co-operative Holocene Mapping Project) in the 1970s and 80s. Several community databases originated in the 1980s, including the Global Lake Status Database (Street-Perrott et al. 1989), the International Tree Ring Database (https://data.noaa.gov/dataset/international-tree-ring-data-bank-itrdb) and the European (www.europeanpollendatabase.net) and North American (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/pollen) Pollen Databases. Archives have subsequently been created for other kinds of paleoenvironmental records. These databases facilitate comparisons among records, regional paleoecological and paleoclimatic reconstructions, evaluation of paleoclimate modeling results and other applications.
Benefits of (big) data sharing
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Figure 1: Pollen data are the most widely-distributed source of quantitative paleoclimate reconstructions used to evaluate model simulations of the mid-Holocene (MH) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). However, there are large gaps in the data coverage although many more pollen sequences are available from public-access databases that could be used for reconstructions. The maps show the distribution of sites for (A) LGM and (B) MH, where magenta dots represent sites with climate reconstructions (Bartlein et al. 2011; Prentice et al. 2017), and green dots represent pollen sites where it would be possible to make quantitative reconstructions (data from BIOME 6000 database; https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.99 and from the EMBSeCBIO database; Cordova et al. 2009). |
Data sharing is now firmly embedded in the scientific culture. Several factors have contributed to this development, including the activities of the research groups developing databases, national and international funding agency policies that mandate open-access publication and data archiving, journal rules that increasingly specify that original data must be available for scrutiny and replication of results, the increasing number of journals dedicated solely to publishing data sets, the increasing ease of obtaining persistent identifiers for data sets, and the recognition that openness about data increases research impact (Piwowar and Vision 2013). However, these advances have not led to a revolution in the approach to data in paleoecology. There are regional analyses (e.g. Huntley et al. 2013) and some global analyses of paleoecological data sets (e.g. Daniau et al. 2012). But the scientific focus is still largely on documenting changing vegetation patterns (e.g. Prentice et al. 2000) or reconstructing climate (e.g. Bartlein et al. 2011) – goals that date from the 1970s and provided the original motivation for the construction of paleoecological databases. Far more could be done using the data that now exist (Fig. 1).
As one example, a large community of ecologists focuses on plant functional traits and how community-mean trait values change along environmental gradients. At a fundamental level, this research seeks to explain aspects of the function of plants and ecosystems (Ali et al. 2015). Trait-based analyses are also being used to explore the controls on within- and between-site diversity (Ackerly and Cornwell 2007) and to develop vegetation models based on fundamental principles rather than empirical relationships (Fyllas et al. 2014). Ecologists are also exploring how species and ecosystems respond to climate change, on shorter (acclimation) and longer (adaptation, migration) timescales. There is growing literature on how the velocity of climate change affects species’ potential for adaptation and migration (e.g. Loarie et al. 2009) and extinction risks for different groups of organisms (Settele et al. 2014). These are all important questions, with implications for conservation policy; paleoecological data should have a great deal to say about all of them.
What stops us embracing big data?
Why has paleoecology missed out on the big data revolution? Contributory factors include the labor-intensive nature of data generation, lack of specialized training in data analysis and modeling techniques, and a persistent lack of cross-fertilization with contemporary ecology. Paleoecology has a strong site-based focus, and a tendency for practitioners to specialize in a particular group of organisms and a particular study region. This is understandable to some extent: the faunas and floras of each continent are different; hard-won expertise in the identification of one group of subfossil organisms does not help with other groups. However, in ecology generally, theoretical data-analysis and modeling approaches are well-established fields of endeavor. Paleoecology, by contrast, is still largely a field- and laboratory-based science; scientists are expected to serve an apprenticeship that involves primary data collection but generally does not provide training in the quantitative and data-analytical skills necessary to make sense of large data sets.
Data-generating techniques in paleoecology are notoriously time-consuming and this reinforces the site-based focus as well as limiting the amount of data that exists. Contemporary ecology and ecosystem science are benefiting from massive new data sources involving automated retrieval – from drones to satellites. Automation in paleoecology, for example in pollen counting, has been discussed repeatedly but there has been little concrete progress. Ecologists have also harnessed the power of citizen science to generate large data sets with high temporal resolution. Activities such as Climateprediction.net (www.climateprediction.net) and Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org) show it is possible to involve non-specialists in scientific projects and generate valuable data on a scale otherwise impossible. We need to think creatively about harnessing people’s enthusiasm for science.
The analysis of large data sets requires skills including working with database software, advanced statistical methods and multivariate analysis. Training in these skills at undergraduate and postgraduate level is patchy. Furthermore, the growing importance of quantitative models as a means to embody and test hypotheses puts a premium on mathematical and programing competencies that are increasingly prioritized in the training of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, but generally not in the training of paleoecologists.
A future for paleoecology
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Figure 2: Conceptual diagram of the current and potential position of paleoecology (purple polygon) in the global change scientific framework, showing areas where relationships to other sciences (blue polygons), data sources and stakeholders could be strengthened to optimize the value of paleoecology to address real-world issues. |
“The present is the key to the past; the past is the key to the future”. Everyone says it, but how often does this crossover occur? There is very little interaction between paleoecology and developments in contemporary ecology, ecophysiology and biophysics. The Future Earth program (http://futureearth.org) could provide opportunities to embed paleoecology more firmly in a multidisciplinary Earth system science context (Fig. 2). Future Earth’s stated commitment to “involving stakeholders throughout the entire research process from co-design to dissemination” should provide opportunities for scientists with different backgrounds, including the unique temporal perspective on species and ecosystems which paleoecologists provide, to work together towards the solution of real-world problems arising from global environmental change. But the realization of these aspirations will require paleoecologists, and others, to think “outside the box” and pay attention to other disciplines.
If paleoecology is to survive, we need a revolution in our definition of the legitimate sphere of investigation and our approaches to training the next generation of paleoecologists. We need to think creatively about generating paleoecological data efficiently and also about the questions that can be addressed with paleoecological data. We need to talk to scientists and practitioners from related fields to co-design research that will realize the unique contribution that paleoecological observations could make to Earth system science and management.
affiliations
Centre for Past Climate Change and School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Sciences (SAGES), Reading University, UK
contact
Sandy P. Harrison: s.p.harrisonreading.ac.uk
references
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Alistair W.R. Seddon
“Regime shifts” are abrupt changes in ecosystem function and state commonly observed in paleoecological records. Understanding whether they represent a linear response to an abrupt external forcing, or are the product of intrinsically mediated dynamics, remains an important distinction.
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Figure 1: Framework used to identify intrinsic vs. extrinsic regime shifts (modified from Seddon et al. 2014). Equivalent trends in control and response variables, combined with linear or unimodal response functions represent extrinsic regime shifts (A-D). Gradual changes in control variables, combined with an abrupt shift in the response variable are more likely to represent an intrinsically mediated response (E-H). |
Ecological theory indicates that ecosystems can experience “regime shifts” – abrupt changes between two or more ecological states, each characterized by their own dynamics, stochastic fluctuations, or cycles (Scheffer 2009). The paleoecological record provides numerous examples of potential regime shifts, but interpreting the dynamics underlying these changes remains a major challenge. On the one hand, ecological regime shifts may represent linear responses to an external forcing; alternatively, they may be the result of a series of intrinsic ecological mechanisms (Fig. 1). Here, I provide a summary of some of my own recent work that aims to distinguish between extrinsically forced and intrinsically mediated transitions, noting that care must be taken not to conflate these different types of regime shifts when interpreting abrupt changes in the paleoecological record.
Theoretical framework
A theoretical framework for understanding abrupt ecosystem change was proposed by Williams et al. (2011), contrasting extrinsically forced against intrinsically mediated ecosystem responses to an environmental forcing (Fig. 1). Abrupt biotic responses as a result of changes in climate during the cooling into, and subsequent warming out of, the Younger Dryas were used as examples of extrinsically forced ecosystem change. In contrast, intrinsically mediated responses result from a combination of site-specific abiotic factors (e.g. soil characteristics, groundwater regime and physiography), or from local-scale biotic processes (competition, facilitation and disturbance) (Williams et al. 2011). Under these conditions, abrupt ecological changes can occur following only a gradual external forcing (e.g. Holocene transitions at the prairie-forest boundary in the North American Midwest).
One type of intrinsic regime shift that has become of particular interest to paleoecologists are fold-bifurcation-type transitions (Fig. 1h), in which positive feedbacks lead to sudden and abrupt transitions in response to slow forcing mechanisms. For example, in shallow lake ecosystems, theory indicates that transitions from clear to turbid waters are the result of a loss of system resilience through gradual nutrient loading (Scheffer et al. 1993). The feedbacks associated with maintaining a system in the turbid state mean that managing a transition back to the original state can be difficult to achieve. Because such “critical transitions” can occur with little apparent warning, understanding their mechanisms has become a major focus for the ecological science community. Furthermore, critical transitions and their associated loss of resilience have been proposed to have been observed a number of times in the paleoecological record.
One of the key insights presented in the framework presented by Williams et al. (2011) is that abrupt ecological responses can occur as a result from both linear and non-linear dynamics. This is important to recognize, because not all abrupt changes observed in the paleoecological record might represent intrinsic regime shifts. The challenge for paleoecologists is to develop the tools and techniques that can be used to disentangle extrinsic and intrinsic responses.
Distinguishing extrinsic and intrinsic regime shifts
One key challenge for studying regime shifts in paleoecological data is the unevenly spaced samples resulting from variability in sedimentation rates. A generalized non-linear least squares (GNLS) regression model can be used to account for this issue, which enables detection of changes in mean and variance between two variables, whilst simultaneously accounting for temporal dependence of data points which are unevenly spaced in time (e.g. Randsalu-Wendrup et al. 2012; Seddon et al. 2014). An additional advantage of GNLS is that a variety of trends can be implemented (e.g. linear, quadratic, logistic), meaning that trends in time series (i.e. ecological variable regressed against sample age) and response functions (ecological variable regressed against environmental driver) can be determined.
Seddon et al. (2014) used GNLS to distinguish intrinsic and extrinsic dynamics in a late-Holocene coastal-lagoon sequence from the Galapagos Islands. Following the framework from Williams et al. (2011), they used independent proxy data to reconstruct a range of habitat and coastal disturbance changes in the lagoon, and statistical modeling to describe the trends in both diatom assemblage and environment across major biotic transitions, and the response functions between these variables. Linear or unimodal relationships between control and response variables, in addition to corresponding trends in the two-temporal series, were assumed to represent extrinsic regime shifts, whilst a slow or gradual change in the control variable, corresponding to an abrupt response, would provide statistical evidence of the importance of intrinsic mechanisms (Fig. 1).
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Figure 2: Evidence of extrinsic and intrinsic regime shifts at a coastal lagoon in the Galapagos Islands (modified from Seddon et al. 2014). (A, B) Example of an extrinsically forced regime shift. A change in habitat conditions (as detected by δ13C analysis of the bulk sediment) result in an equivalent response in the diatom assemblage data in the lagoon (as described by the first principle component of a PCA on the diatoms) with a curvilinear response function (C). (D, E) Potential evidence of an intrinsic regime shift. Minimal changes in the surrounding landscape (e.g. tidal disturbance events represented by geochemical data) result in an abrupt transition from mangrove (low sediment δ13C) to microbial mat (high sediment δ13C). Standard GNLS modeling was unable to adequately describe the relationship between the two variables, so the data were split at the major change in δ13C and two separate models were fitted to demonstrate the dual relationship with the control variable (F). |
The major diatom regime shifts observed in the lagoon showed the general characteristics of an extrinsic forcing (e.g. Fig. 2a-c). Given the fast generation times of the diatoms relative to the temporal resolution of the diatom record, perhaps this is not surprising (Hsieh and Ohman 2006), although critical transitions in diatom assemblages (i.e. intrinsic regime shifts) have been suggested elsewhere (Scheffer 2009; Wang et al. 2012). In contrast, the stable isotope data, representing transitions from a mangrove-dominated system to a microbial mat, appeared to occur at a time of limited salinity and other local environmental changes, hinting at evidence for intrinsic rather than extrinsic dynamics (Fig. 2d-f).
An alternative approach is investigating evidence for extrinsic responses from multiple paleoecological records. According to their framework, Williams et al. (2011) suggested that biotic responses to large extrinsic climatic drivers, such as those occurring during the last deglaciation, would be indicated by near synchronous responses across a large area. To investigate this, Seddon et al. (2015) applied a generalized additive mixed modeling approach to a series of ten high-resolution pollen records from Northern Europe. The modeling procedure tested whether a single smoother (i.e. pan-European, synchronous response), or multiple smoothers (i.e. individual site response) was the better explanation of the variance observed in the datasets. Results indicated that, during the early Holocene, vegetation changes provided evidence of similar behavior across sites, thus suggesting an extrinsic response.
Limitations and outlook
The studies outlined here represent just a few examples which have used quantitative approaches to identify and understand abrupt transitions. However, whilst these statistical methods are useful for identifying overall trends and associations within and between ecological and environmental temporal series, they do not fully characterize underlying mechanisms. Studies which can combine paleoecological data with process-based modeling are a challenge, but may be particularly useful for understanding the local-scale feedbacks, facilitation and competitive effects that mediate intrinsic responses in the paleoecological record (e.g. deMenocal et al. 2000; Jeffers et al. 2011).
A second limitation is that they are dependent on the availability of independent proxy data – using the framework outlined in Seddon et al. (2014) only works if all the key environmental forcing variables are available. Approaches such as early warning indicators, which use the underlying theory of critical slowing down to infer that fold bifurcations have occurred, have the potential to bypass this issue, but at present remain difficult to apply to paleoecological data on account of their sensitivity to unevenly spaced samples (Carstensen et al. 2013). Despite these limitations, statistical approaches can be used in conjunction with long-term ecological data in sediments to provide insights into the underlying dynamics of abrupt ecological transitions. Whether such transitions represent intrinsically mediated dynamics, or are the result of a linear response to an abrupt external forcing, remains an important distinction when interpreting abrupt changes in paleoecological records.
affiliations
Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Norway
contact
Alistair W.R. Seddon: alistair.seddonuib.no
references
Carstensen J et al. (2013) Nature 498, E11-E12
deMenocal P et al. (2000) Quat Sci Rev 19: 347-361
Hsieh C-H, Ohman MD (2006) Ecology 87: 1932-1938
Jeffers ES et al. (2011) J Ecol 99: 1063-1070
Randsalu-Wendrup L et al. (2012) Ecosystems 15: 1336-1350
Scheffer M (2009) Critical Transitions in Nature and Society, Princeton University Press, 400 pp
Scheffer M et al. (1993) Trends Ecol Evolut 8: 275-279
Seddon AWR et al. (2011) PLOS ONE: e22376
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Seddon AWR et al. (2015) The Holocene 25: 25-36