Open science for sustainable solutions

Addressing today’s environmental challenges requires that we: change the ways that we do science; harness the enormity of existing data; and adopt new approaches to managing, publishing and sharing data.  Many of the necessary changes are encompassed in the movement towards open science—making data and research results accessible to society (amateurs, professionals, managers and citizens).  In this talk, I first provide an historical overview of data management and data sharing from the perspective of open science. Lessons learned from past and emerging large environmental research programs are presented along with several examples of success stories where easy access to scientific data and results led to better scientific understanding and natural resource management.  Next, I describe some of the current impediments to open science and highlight solutions to these challenges including various tools and approaches that promote data stewardship, sharing and synthesis.  Finally, I conclude with a future vision for how informatics and open science solutions can enable evidence-based decision-making and sustainable solutions.