1. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Issue – how to facilitate communication and collaboration across disciplines Why – issues facing society (sustainable coastal systems, resource extraction, climate change) require interdisciplinary approaches How – pick an interdisciplinary issue and develop a team to design a plan for addressing it Result – provide a discussion paper that outlines the issues and problems encountered in developing an interdisciplinary program and approaches for resolution

2. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Consider data management barriers and related disciplinary or institutional challenges for integrated interdisciplinary research projects with emphasis on natural-social science collaborations Identified potential barriers disciplinary ‘silos’ of research concepts and associated data management systems diversity cultural practices among disciplinary fields lack of adequate training for data production and management, resulting in insufficient attention to metadata lack of resources for data management QA procedures new challenges resulting from development of new sensors, new data types, and new resources lack of recognition and support for truly interdisciplinary research and its associated data management conceptual limitation to combine datasets and information from various sources to create new knowledge Merging data with different resolutions and quantitative rigor

3. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Questions: What is needed to facilitate good data management at the interface of natural and social science that will advance global environmental change research that has sustainability as a goal What infrastructure and institutional changes are needed to encourage data exchanges that will promote interdisciplinary or integrated research

4. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Two potential issues to use as case studies for data management, data access, and data exchange that include natural and human science components are: Marine fisheries management (potential fishery is Atlantic surfclam) Ocean acidification

5. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Next steps are to develop a discussion paper that outlines the issues and potential problems with studying a marine fishery and ocean acidification from “end-to-end” Includes characterizing the natural system, tracing the effects to humans, and assessing changes in well being Involves quantitative numerical model outputs to qualitative narrative survey data – how to merge these is an important constraint

6. RCN: OceanObs Task Team on Stimulating Interdisciplinary Cooperation Suggestions for different approaches, case studies are welcome, and data management methods are welcome!