Data and the Bees
We use data to identify and solve problems all the time. In truth, this is nothing new. When wheelwrights were making wagon wheels, they paid attention to what went into a wheel that lasted longer than another. How many spokes, what kind of wood to use, and whether or not it was worth putting a metal hoop around the wheel. The Roman Legions paid attention to the most effective shield formations and used that data to build a massive empire. Farmers learned that cross-pollinating different varieties of the same plants could create whole new varieties by promoting desired characteristics. They just needed the right mix of plants and bees to help in the process.
For a while now, there has been concern about the number of bees dying off around the world. Whole colonies have been collapsing. Already, the bee population has dropped sufficiently that some beekeepers are actually driving their colonies around to different farms to make sure the crops are pollinated. Given the role they play in the food chain – pollinating all sorts of flora to keep the bottom of the chain going – people have been looking feverishly to find the cause.
Researchers from Penn State’s Ecology Program recently made some headway in this area. A recent study looked at the combined effect of habitat loss and a changing climate on the bee population. Habitat loss is of course fairly obvious. The more people spread out, the less room there is for a natural bee colony. Especially in the big cities where there is little grass to be had, to say nothing of the lack of forests and fields full of flowers. A changing climate is naturally more difficult to quantify as one has to take into account a number of factors such as day-to-day weather and longer term cycles that exist both in the earth’s orbit and the sun’s sunspot cycle. However, it was found that the warmer winters and increased rains in the northeastern part of the United States had a definite negative effect on the bee population.
The researchers relied heavily on data from the United States Geological Survey in conjunction with spatial maps and predictive models to reach their conclusions. One of these conclusions is that different species of bees are affected by different kinds of environmental changes. One species may be heavily affected by sunlight, another by the amount of precipitation. So, what affected the bees more in general? Loss of habitat or climate?
Bees are pretty adaptable as it turns out. Unless you suddenly build a massive industrial complex where there was nothing before, the bees will work around it for the most part. However, the climate is tougher for them to handle. That’s because changes in rainfall and temperature don’t just affect the bees directly, they affect their food supply. If it is hot or cold enough to knock out a weaker bee colony, it’s also bad enough to knock out a lot of the flowers they fed on. That means another colony can’t just move in and take over. There is literally nothing to take over.
How will this research help us come up with solutions to the bee problem? It’s too early to say. Yet, these Penn State researchers have taken an important step in getting us to a solution. They identified the problem at hand and used data to better define it. With this new research others can pick up the baton and keep things moving in the right direction. That’s how things get done, by collecting, refining, and analyzing the data again and again until the solution to the problem finally becomes clear.
That’s why TARTLE puts so much emphasis on data privacy and sharing. In sharing our data to support important work like the above we are helping to solve problems that are bigger than any one of us, but collectively should be well within our grasp.
What’s your data worth?
