Coordinated distributed experiments: an emerging tool for testing global hypotheses in ecology and environmental science

Abstract

There is a growing realization among scientists and policy makers that an increased understanding of today’s environmental issues requires international collaboration and data synthesis. Meta-analyses have served this role in ecology for over a decade, but the different experimental methodologies researchers use can limit the strength of the meta-analytic approach. Considering the global nature of many environmental issues, a new collaborative approach, which we call coordinated distributed experiments (CDEs), is needed that will control for both spatial and temporal scale, and that encompasses large geographic ranges. Ecological CDEs, involving standardized, controlled protocols, have the potential to advance our understanding of general principles in ecology and environmental science.Peer reviewe

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

“…Especially exciting are recent advances in techniques for citizen science and for sensing, cataloging, and sharing ecological data from local to global (Fraser et al 2013, Crain et al 2014, Cristescu 2014, Turner 2014, McGill et al 2015. Macroecological study of anthroecological processes (Burnside et al 2012) is increasingly supported by powerful tools for ''big data'' analytics, including the rise and spread of behaviorally modern humans using paleogenomics (Pa¨a¨bo 2014) and the structure of human social networks, including changes in social centrality (Schich et al 2014), the crowdsourcing of ecological questions and experiments (Fraser et al 2013, Sutherland et al 2013, and new methods for integrative global synthesis, including more powerful forms of meta-study (Magliocca et al 2015) and global geospatial data and analytics (Verburg et al 2011, Martin et al 2012, Schmill et al 2014. Ecologists have much to gain by further embracing these new larger scale methods for socio-ecological data acquisition and synthesis.…”

Tundra arthropods provide key insights into ecological responses to environmental change

“…Members have organized and participated in numerous international conferences and symposia. NeAT working groups are currently developing protocols for multi-site comparative work and distributed experiments (Fraser et al 2013), which will engage researchers, students, and citizen scientists. Recently, NeAT has gained status as a thematic network of the University of the Arctic (UArctic).…”

The Global Garlic Mustard Field Survey (GGMFS): challenges and opportunities of a unique, large-scale collaboration for invasion biology

“…Such planned, coordinated endeavours provide much more consistent and reliable data than those which could be obtained through reviews and meta-analyses of smaller studies that typically differ in methodology and sample size, and in some cases were not designed to answer the scientific questions being addressed (Moles et al 2011). Our general approach is similar but intermediate to two increasingly popular models of large-scale research networks: citizen science projects and "coordinated distributed experiments" or CDEs (Fraser et al 2012). These studies are generally conducted on a global scale, but vary in the level of expertise, number of participants, sample size and data depth (Figure 2).…”

“…In contrast, large-scale coordinated distributed experiments typically involve a smaller group of professional scientists but require a higher levels of funding. For example, the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) (http://www.geog.ubc.ca/itex), and the Nutrient Network (NutNet) (http://nutnet.science.oregonstate.edu) involve scientists using standardized protocols to collect ecological data at a series of sites around the world (Craine et al 2007;Fraser et al 2012). The GGMFS is intermediate to these two general approaches as it involves a larger number of highly-trained professional scientists, covering a larger number of sites, but with less intensity of research and low research cost per site (Figure 2).…”