Preliminary survey of the information preservation needs of the marine conservation community

Abstract

Observations of environmental degradation, ecosystem change, fisheries collapses, and biodiversity loss have raised concerns over our ability to preserve marine communities. Knowledge plays a key role in any attempt to preserve these ecosystems. However, the basic natural history knowledge necessary to understand these systems has also degraded as the discipline of ecology has evolved in response to technological pressure and changing funding priorities within science. To make matters worse significant species losses occurred before many ecosystems were monitored making it difficult to determine the nature of undisturbed systems. This thesis analyzes the data currently being produced by the marine ecologists and conservationists in order to describe to librarians and information scientists what efforts can be taken to preserve data critical for ongoing conservation efforts. Description of data generated for the purposes of aquatic ecology was obtained through a domain analysis of the journal Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. Three years of data generation was recorded for all full-length research articles published between 2016-2018. The data is heterogeneous; however, important trends were uncovered. There is a large amount of geographic data being produced within the context of determining biodiversity. Physical sampling of the environment means that adequate data preservation requires museum resources play a part in preserving specimens. Accessibility of data will determine its utility to ongoing studies, and online resources can easily facilitate needed accessibility.