Actionable information on ecological condition requires ingestion of current data, development of necessary indicators and effective visual communication. I will discuss interactive websites and automated workflows across several marine ecological applications and projects. NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment program is ingesting data, developing indicators and communicating results as online and now interactive Ecological Status Reports. The National Marine Sanctuaries is similarly developing interactive Condition Reports with interactive infographics linking ecosystem elements displayed as silhouettes with popup windows to time series and maps.
Advances in the development of tools based on the R scientific programming language provide compellingly easy and efficient operations for: wrangling data (tidyverse), weaving formatted text with output such as tables and figures from executed chunks of code into various formats (Rmarkdown), interactive visualization using JavaScript libraries (htmlwidgets), and interactive applications able to flexibly respond to user interactions (Shiny). Code can be versioned and shared through Github, which is further enhanced by the ability to freely host simple websites and run continuous integration (Travis CI) for updating.
Results/Conclusions
The use of these R and Github tools for providing reproducible open data science workflows lends transparency and promotes innovation in the process of managing ecological systems.