Jason Stockwell's overview of the GEISHA project (CESAB-John Wesley Powell Center) at the "Supporting Data-Intensive Freshwater and Marine Research: Integrating Informatics, Infrastructure, Databases and Open Science" session at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, in February 2017.

1. GEISHA: GLOBAL EVALUATION OF THE IMPACTS OF
STORMS ON FRESHWATER HABITAT AND STRUCTURE
OF PHYTOPLANKTON ASSEMBLAGES
Jason Stockwell1, Orlane Anneville2, Vijay Patil3, Alexander Looi1,
Cayelan Carey4, Gaël Dur5, Bastiaan Ibelings6, Sally MacIntyre7,
Giuseppe Morabito8, Peeter Nõges9, Donald Pierson10, James Rusak11,
Sami Souissi12, Dietmar Straile13, Stephen Thackeray14
1University of Vermont, 2French National
Institute for Agricultural Research, 3USGS,
4Virginia Tech, 5Shizuoka University,
6University of Geneva, 7University of
California Santa Barbara, 8Italian National
Research Council, 9Estonian University of
Life Sciences, 10Uppsala University, 11Ontario
Ministry of Environment and Climate
Change, 12Université Lille, 13University of
Konstanz, 14Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Photo credit: Lake Champlain Basin Program

2. GEISHA – Evaluate the impact of storms on lake
phytoplankton community composition
Identify mechanisms that
lead to new phytoplankton
assemblages or community
resilience
Storms
Ecosystem
Function
Biodiversity
Physical
Habitat
Identify associations between
abrupt shifts in phytoplankton
and extreme events
Characterize changes in
phytoplankton community
relative to lake physical states
Credit: Eric Leibensperger / SUNY-Plattsburgh

3. GEISHA originated from GLEON
Project “Stormblitz”
GLEON 15 in Argentina (2013)
Reynolds 1988
Long-term data sets to test hypotheses;
high-frequency data sets as available

4. Project “Stormblitz” proceeded slowly
GLEON 16 in Québec (2014)
Needed $ to make progress!

5. GEISHA creates the time, space, and
resources to work as a cohesive unit
Task 1: Data Compilation
Gather data, QA/QC, and combine datasets.
Task 2: Method Development
Develop metrics and statistical tools to run inter-
site comparisons
Task 3: Data Analyses
Metrics, effect-sizes and meta-analyses.
Task 4: Interpretation, Synthesis and Theoretical Models
of Changes in Communities
Propose hypotheses on mechanisms driving observations; develop
frameworks on rules of community assembly and sensitivity of
ecosystems to storms.

6. GEISHA is an international team that brings diverse
sets of skills and experiences to the table
Name Family name Country
Rita Adrian Germany
Orlane Anneville France
Laurence Carvalho UK
Gaël Dur Japan
Chih-hao Hsieh Taiwan
Marc Lajeunesse USA
Aleksandra Lewandowska Germany
Alexander H. Looi USA
Vijay Patil USA
Jim Rusak Canada
Nico Salmaso Italy
François Schmitt France
Sami Souissi France
Jason Stockwell USA
Dietmar Straile Germany
Stephen J. Thackeray UK
Patrick Venail Switzerland
• Modelers
• Ecologists
• Limnologists
• Physicists
• Empiricists
• Theoreticians

7. GEISHA also includes many data providers and
additional participants (> 50 total)
Syuhei Ban
Juliana Bonhembeger
Cayelan Carey
Chun-Wei Chang
Isabelle Domaizon
Evelyn Gaiser
Jennifer Graham
Josef Hejzlar
Amy Hetherington
Scott Higgins
Bas Ibelings
Kanako Ishikawa
Stéphan Jacquet
Alo Laas
Mary Lofton
Sally MacIntyre
Shin-Ichiro Matsukzaki
Guiseppe Morabito
David de Motta Marques
Emily Nodine
Peeter Nõges
Tina Nõges
Ho-Dong Park
Don Pierson
Francesco Pomati
Anna Rigosi
Alon Rimmer
Lars Rudstam
Angela Shambaugh
Hilary Swain
Michael Vanni
Rebecca Waskovich
Tanner Williamson
Yang Yang
Horacio Zagarese
Tamar Zohary

8. How to manage a large, international group
interacting at different time and space scales?

9. • What makes collaborations
succeed or fail?
• What kinds of challenges are we
likely to face?
• Best practices for team science
Team science concepts used to engage the group
during first workshop (Read et al. 2016. Building the team for
team science. Ecosphere 7:e01291)
• The collaborative decision
making process
• Dealing with conflict
• Disagreements are part of the
process (i.e., the “groan zone”)

10. Data commitment from > 30 lakes
Low-frequency: manual samples (phyto, vertical profiles) every 2 weeks; weather; > 4 yrs
High-frequency: buoy data on chl a, phycocyanin, other limnological variables; weather;
coupled with low-frequency data

11. Data challenges: 1) phytoplankton taxonomy; 2)
match/mis-match of sampling frequency and time
scales of storm impacts
2 wks 2 wks 2 wks 2 wks 2 wks
2 wks Low-frequency
data
High-frequency
data
Baseline
Impact

12. First workshop focused on team process, ideas,
short-term goals and responsibility
• Emphasis on team science to lay
groundwork for long-term collaboration
(organizers heavily prepared for this)
• Idea generation, refinement and
expansion of questions/approaches
• Biology and Physics working groups; focus
on within and cross-over questions;
review paper planned – what does a
storm look like to phytoplankton?

13. Work plans established and responsibility assigned
to keep on track between workshops
• Groups/sub-groups meet at least monthly
via Skype; specify goals and responsibilities
• Data compilation & QA/QC ongoing; establish
FTP server
• 1st draft of review paper due at 2nd workshop (June @ USGS
John Wesley Powell Center, Fort Collins)
• 3rd workshop (November @
CESAB, Aix-en-Provence)
• GLEON 19 All-Hands’
Meeting (late November @
New Paltz, NY)

14. Data needed from under-represented regions
Low-frequency: manual samples (phytoplankton, vertical profiles) every 2 weeks; > 5 yrs
High-frequency: buoy data on chl a, phycocyanin, other limnological variables; coupled
with low-frequency data

15. GEISHA funding is from two sources: CESAB (France)
and USGS (USA)
Funding coordinated across
institutions
• 5 workshops (CESAB)
• 1 workshop, 3-yr PhD (USGS)
Co-funding offered advantages to
both institutions

16. Disagreement is part of the process
Kaner et al. (2007)

17. Pre-workshop survey of GEISHA participants
What is your expected level of involvement?

18. How important are the following outcomes?
Pre-workshop survey of GEISHA participants