What is ecological informatics?
The aim of ecological informatics is to develop and implement efficient and effective methods, tools, and technologies in order to discover, access, interpret, integrate and analyze complex ecological data from a highly-distributed set of field stations, laboratories, research sites, and individual researchers. Essentially, ecological informatics is an interdisciplinary framework that aims to improve the way we manage, access, use, interpret, visualize, and communicate the diversity of ecological data in a manner useful to citizens, researchers, students/educators, resource managers, and policy makers.
Applications of ecological informatics include carbon management, ecological sustainability, conservation planning, ecological forecasting, and global climate change, as well as computational approaches to ecological scales and complexity, ecosystems analysis, synthesis, simulation and forecasting, ecological pattern analysis, and management of ecological data.
Ecological informatics brings together diverse disciplines and toolsets, such as geographic information systems (GIS), statistics, modeling, information technology, and computational programming, with a more comprehensive goal of making ecological data more useful to society.
Sensor Network Image Credit: N. RAGER FULLER/NSF
Ecological Informatics at BSI
The Big Sky Institute at Montana State University has embraced ecological informatics as a key interdisciplinary framework that can support and enhance MSU's recognized leadership in ecological and environmental research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the state of Montana. Additionally, ecological informatics positions BSI as an interdisciplinary linkage between science and society, a role that supports BSI's mission as an an interdisciplinary center dedicated to creating, applying, and communicating science-based knowledge to promote a deeper understanding of environmental systems, both in their own right and in relationship to the human communities that depend upon them.
Currently BSI has established its role as an ecological informatics center through projects such as the Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership, the NBII Mountain Prairie Information Node, the NSF GK12 Fellows Program, and the International Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) Project. BSI is additionally planning to develop a field station in Big Sky and is supporting related efforts at MSU, including development of a biophysical sensor network in Greater Yellowstone and long-term ecological and hydrologic studies in Yellowstone NP, Glacier NP, and the Big Sky area.
Who to contact at BSI regarding ecological informatics
- Todd Kipfer is the BSI Assistant Director of Yellowstone Science Initiatives
- Greg Pederson is a climate and ecology research associate at BSI with interests in ecological informatics
Ecological informatics links
