Digital repository of associations between environmental variables: A new resource to facilitate knowledge synthesis

Abstract

a b s t r a c tResponsible care and management of Earth's resources requires scientific support, but the pool of underused research is growing rapidly. Environmental science research studies describe associations between variables (e.g. statistical relationships between stressors and responses). We propose open-access and online sharing of such associations. This concept differs from various efforts around the world to promote sharing of primary research data, but holds similar goals of improved use of existing knowledge. The initiative is made possible by recent developments in information technology and evolving online culture (e.g. crowdsourcing and citizen science). We have begun to connect existing projects that catalog and store associations, thereby moving toward a single virtual repository. Researchers and decision makers may share and re-use associations for myriad purposes, including: increasing efficiency and timeliness of systematic reviews, environmental assessments and meta-analyses, identifying knowledge gaps and research opportunities, providing evolved metrics of research impact, and demonstrating connections between research and environmental improvement.

Quantified biotic and abiotic responses to multiple stress in freshwater, marine and ground waters

“…Relevant information from the papers was extracted to a spreadsheet to enable a synthesis of the literature (see Review Table.xlsx in Supplementary materials). According to the concept, each effect of combined stressors on a response variable (a 'bivariate association' sensu Ziegler et al 2015) described in a quantitative way forms an 'evidence item' (EI) sensu Webb et al (2015) that was entered into a separate row of the table. Papers containing more than one EI thus covered several rows of the table (Table 1).…”

Drawing together multiple lines of evidence from assessment studies of hydropeaking pressures in impacted rivers

“…Further research and development could lead to an ecological ontology to enhance the searching, sharing, and understanding of evidence (Ziegler et al 2015). This ontology might improve our ability to locate literature sources of evidence constrained by language or publication type in Europe or elsewhere.…”

Software support for environmental evidence synthesis

“…Alternatively, there is the potential to establish open databases that collate published information in a rich yet systematic way, a goal that is already being attempted in some groups and subsets of the literature (e.g. Semantic Scholar 31 ).…”