J. Emmett Duffy (Smithsonian Institution, MarineGEO program and SERC)
Climate change and biodiversity loss pose grand, intertwined challenges to nature and society. Responding to these global changes requires global science, which requires a global team. Here we review the mission, development, and accomplishments of the Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), a network of partners led by the Smithsonian Institution conducting coordinated science to understand how coastal ecosystems work to inform actions that keep them working. We focus on nearshore habitats (“ecosystems on the edge”) because this is where people and biodiversity are concentrated and interact most. We aim to empower partners to do rigorous macroecological research via coordination, standardization, data management, and knowledge sharing. MarineGEO has now engaged partners from nearly 100 institutions in 34 countries across 56 of the world’s coastal ecoregions and 6 continents to (1) establish standardized time series of change in seagrass, reef, and other coastal ecosystems; (2) coordinate experiments and comparative studies to understand drivers of change; and (3) lead data and knowledge syntheses to inform management and policy. We review selected results and implications of our network’s research, chart the course ahead, outline our collaboration with the Marine Biodiversity Observation network and Marine Life 2030 program of the UN Ocean Decade, and discuss how we can work together on shared grand challenges.