BODC quoted in The Observer

A recent NERC research cruise, on which the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) provided on-board data management, was featured in The Observer last Sunday (25 January). The article, 'The secrets of the shelf seas – one of Earth's most important ecosystems' discussed Shelf Seas Biogeochemistry (SSB), a major UK research programme that aims to improve our understanding of how nutrients and carbon dioxide are cycled in the shelf seas surrounding the UK and north west Europe.

Colony of salps floating under the RRS Discovery during DY018. ©

Dr Louise Darroch, BODC's Data Manager for SSB, has participated on two of the project's cruises to the Celtic Sea. She was interviewed by the newspaper about her participation in the second cruise, DY018, which took place on NERC's new research ship, RRS Discovery.

SSB is co-funded by NERC and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). BODC will manage data collected during a large fieldwork campaign due to end later this year. As well as securing and quality controlling the resulting data, BODC will also facilitate data exchange between SSB programme members and the general public.

There's more information about SSB at the project website. For more details of the DY018, see the Principal Scientist's blog.

EnviroHack 2015, a two-day data jam

EnviroHack, organised by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) will take place in London in February. The NERC-funded 'hackathon' event will provide an exciting opportunity to collaborate and create value from environmental data sets.

EnviroHack 2015 ©

Raw data collected by environmental scientists will be available for 'hackers' to explore in new ways. For example, integrating atmosphere, soil, river and ocean data from different NERC centres could allow the tracking of a pollutant from its source, through the river network and into the sea. It is becoming increasingly important to understand the Earth System holistically, rather than looking at meteorology, oceanography, ecology or hydrology in isolation.

Participants will be using 'Linked Data', a means of using web technology to link separate but related data sets. BODC has been using Linked Data in its projects for several years, most recently in the FP7-funded SenseOCEAN project. The raw data for this event will come from: BODC, CEH, the British Geological Survey (BGS), UK Data Archive, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and the Met Office.

Dr Adam Leadbetter, Vocabularies Manager at BODC and one of the co-ordinators of EnviroHack said: "we anticipate that attendees will come from universities, NERC institutes, public bodies and private businesses. This mix will foster new contacts and may lead to future collaboration."

There will be a few brief introductory talks on the Friday morning, after which participants will split into teams. Each team will explore the available data and produce an application prototype over the two days.

The event, facilitated by Red Ninja Studios and supported by Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), will run from Friday 27 February at 10:00am until Saturday 28 February at 8:00pm at the Digital Catapult Centre, 101 Euston Road, London. To register for free or request more information, please contact Dr Graham Allen.