1. Matthew B. Jones
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Advancing Software for Ecological Forecasting
March 25, 2014
Software for Ecological Synthesis

2. Ocean Health Index (OHI)
OceanHealthIndex
Halpernetal.2012

3. The “long-tail” of science
Heidorn, P. 2008. doi:10.1353/lib.0.0036

4. https://goa.nceas.ucsb.edu

5. https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/

6. Data Heterogeneity
Heterogeneity HighLow
•Tight coupling
•Simple subsetting
•Explicit semantics
•Loose coupling
•Hard subsetting
•Limited semantics
Data set size LowHigh

7. Diverse Analysis and Modeling
• Wide variety of analyses used in ecology and
environmental sciences
– Statistical analyses and trends
– Rule-based models
– Dynamic models (e.g., continuous time)
– Individual-based models (agent-based)
– many others
• Implemented in many frameworks
– R, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, Jump, C, Python, Fortran

8. Kepler
DMP-Tool
Software & Data Interoperability
Plan
Collect
Assure
Describe
Preserve
Discover
Integrate
Analyze

9. • Produce an open-source scientific workflow
system
• Design, share, and execute scientific workflows
• Support scientists in a variety of disciplines
• e.g., biology, ecology, oceanography, astronomy
• Features
• Data access
• Cross analytical packages
• Documentation
• Provenance tracking
• Model archiving and sharing

10. Scientific workflows promote interoperability

11. Why workflows?
• Executability
• Replicability
• Reproducibility
• Transparency
• Modularity
• Reusability
• Provenance

12. How do we harness the long tail?
• Efficient data federation
• Interoperable software workflows
• Central search for discovery
• Just-in-time data integration
– Loose coupling
– Schema-less storage