The 2025 “Hacking Limnology” Workshop Series and DSOS Virtual Summit: A Half Decade of Data‐Intensive Aquatic Science

The 5th Aquatic Ecosystem MOdeling Network—Junior (AEMON-J) “Hacking Limnology” Workshop and 6th Virtual Summit: Incorporating Data Science and Open Science in the Aquatic Sciences (DSOS) convened 21–25 July 2025. As in previous years (Fig. 1; Meyer and Zwart 2020; Meyer et al. 2021b, 2021c, 2022, 2024), the virtual workshops and summit were free of charge, the content was formatted to allow for broad engagement from a globally distributed audience, and workshop materials and recordings were made available on the AEMON-J/DSOS archive (Meyer et al. 2021a). In contrast to previous years, which primarily focused on inland aquatic ecosystems, this year's workshops and summit showcased a notable plurality of ecosystem types, with workshops spanning marine, riverine, and lacustrine environments. The weeklong event brought together researchers and practitioners interested in the nexus of data science, open science, and the aquatic sciences, hosting between 47 and 65 attendees at a single time and a higher number of registrants (n = 389), who might opt to access the material asynchronously. Reflecting on the past half decade of workshops and summits, we believe that the level of engagement by the aquatic sciences community highlights the need for training and knowledge sharing in the data-intensive aquatic science community. Moreover, the accumulated database of training material (Meyer et al. 2021a) reveals a niche that the “Hacking Limnology” event fills—an opportunity for early career aquatic data scientists and modelers to use such resources to become familiar with state-of-the-art developments through hands-on experience. Exposure to new developments and scientific insights is at the core of most scientific gatherings, but the hands-on experience and ability to revisit this event's content enable a higher likelihood of future application. The fast pace of developments in both the aquatic and computational sciences necessitates constant exposure to new techniques and can fatigue even the most energized attendees. However, our virtual workshops and summits create a space where experts and learners alike can bond over shared struggles, solutions, and new research frontiers. Even though the workshops and summits only run over the course of one week, the organizing team strives to provide a virtual opportunity for online, grassroots collaborations to thrive year-round. This year's “Hacking Limnology” workshop series featured three consecutive days of workshops, with each day comprising a keynote talk, a live workshop, a session for questions and answers, and opportunities for breakout discussions. Remote sensing of aquatic environments was a major focus of this year's workshops, where participants learned to create habitat suitability maps for reefs in southern Florida w(USA) as well as velocity flow fields and bathymetry for rivers in Oregon (USA). The first day of the workshop series covered accessing Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Wheeler 2004), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program (O'Brien et al. 2017) data through Python pipelines as a basis for species distribution models (Murray et al. 2025). The second day focused on mapping flow fields in rivers and streams from high-resolution aerial imagery with the Toolbox for River Velocimetry using Images from Aircraft (TRiVIA) software (Legleiter and Kinzel 2023). The workshop series concluded with a Hacking Limnology staple, a hands-on tutorial on running process-based aquatic ecosystem models. In this case, participants gained experience with model ensembles for a series of lakes using the Lake Ecosystem Research NZ (LERNZ) modeling platform (Özkundakci et al. 2024) and the Aquatic Ecosystem Model Ensemble (AEME) R package (Moore and McBride 2025; R Core Team 2025). All three workshops provided attendees with example scripts, case studies, and step-by-step guidance on how to apply these methods to other systems. As for previous workshops, these materials are available in the community's Open Science Framework archive (Meyer et al. 2021a). The 2025 DSOS virtual summit held over two days following the “Hacking Limnology” workshops consisted of pre-recorded presentations focusing on the nexus of data science, open science, and the aquatic sciences. The presentations were grouped into four sessions: “The Surface Water Ocean Topography Mission,” “Novel Approaches for Unpacking Ecosystem Function,” “Open Tools for Open Science,” and “Open Data and Open Models for Open Science.” Each session consisted of four 10 minute pre-recorded videos, and at the end of each session, a live question-and-answer session was held. The presentations covered a broad array of topics, from harnessing the power of satellite imagery to establishing workflows for flood protection, and from estimating greenhouse gas emissions in North American streams to modeling thermal stratification in remote Andean lakes. As in previous summits, the 2025 DSOS virtual summit highlighted the breadth of scientific questions being addressed with a wealth of computationally intensive methods. The summit also hosted a career panel that focused on creating a professional portfolio amenable to academic, industry, government, and non-profit job sectors. The panelists, Nichole Barger (The Nature Conservancy), Matthew Ross (Colorado State University), Ryan McClure (National Ecological Observatory Network), and Simon Topp (Upstream Tech), shared personal experiences and advice. Among the many topics discussed, a key takeaway from the panel included the need for interpersonal skills when collaborating in teams. Especially in times when “big data” innovations may lead to perceived disconnections between collaborators, the panelists all underscored that now is a time to harness and hone adeptness in human interactions, because these skills can often be critical for creating cohesive team dynamics. More concretely, the panelists agreed that engaging in collaborative work early and frequently in one's career provided ample experience with interpersonal skills that could then be used to develop one's own collaboration style. Further refinement of these skills could come through leadership roles and experience working in teams of various sizes. Nevertheless, the core principle of being kind, courteous, and collaborative was a common theme throughout the entire session. The fields of aquatic science, data science, and open science are developing at a fast pace. While this growth underscores that this research space is active and dynamic, it also poses challenges for researchers and practitioners. It is already challenging to remain informed about new developments in any one field, let alone in all three. Hacking Limnology, therefore, has begun enabling participants to experience in-depth tutorials with various tools and methods, while also creating an archive of such material for asynchronous learning. Moreover, the virtual and free-of-charge format with openly available material afterwards ensures that researchers worldwide can access this state-of-the-art knowledge, an impact that can be difficult to achieve through in-person meetings or virtual events with restricted access (e.g., time, fee, or membership). From the vantage point of the organizing team, the benefits and opportunities of this virtual, archived format are numerous. Open science and open data have become a shared value among many researchers, and events such as this can be a great amplifier for the impact of aquatic data science and open science research. These events also provide an opportunity to widen participation through knowledge sharing (Meyer et al. 2024). Our observation is that aquatic data science and open science researchers are eager to share their expertise and likewise are eager to find an audience of motivated early career scientists. Looking to the future, we remain enthusiastic about the Hacking Limnology Workshops and DSOS Virtual Summits. Born out of challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, these events have brought hundreds of attendees together over the past half decade, where researchers who might otherwise not have the flexibility or resources to engage can feel empowered and represented in a community of their peers. Perhaps surprisingly, a major success of these events is the interpersonal connection that has been formed. In times of COVID-19 isolation, these events created community. In times of disciplinary siloing, they created bridges across fields. In times of rapid development of artificial intelligence and automation, they created a space to mature interpersonal communication. Moving forward, we aim to keep these aspects of Hacking Limnology and DSOS thriving, where a focus on data science helps us understand aquatic ecosystems and a focus on interpersonal connection helps us understand the human behind the keyboard. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. Jorrit P. Mesman received funding from Formas (Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development) and the European Union's Horizon Europe Programme under the 2022 Joint Transnational Call of the European Partnership Water4All (Grant Agreement n°101060874, “MEWS” project). Michael F. Meyer is an Associate Editor at Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin. Carolina C. Barbosa is a former Associate Editor at Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin.