The Known, Unknown and Unknowable (KUU)
Marine Biodiversity: Present, Past and Future
The Census of Marine Life has adopted the Known, Unknown and Unknowable (KUU) approach as an integrative component to its Program. The purpose of this approach is to evaluate what we know and what is within our current limits of understanding (e.g. with advances in technology), in order to develop a strategy for research and discovery that does not get hindered by pursuit of the unknowable. Each of the individual Ocean Realm Field Projects of CoML held KUU-themed workshops before launching their research programs.
CoML also co-sponsored a series of broad conferences on Marine Biodiversity: Past, Present and Future, led by Nancy Knowlton, Jeremy Jackson and Enric Sala of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The goal of these conferences, which involved biological, physical, social and information scientists from around the world, was to explore the structure of knowledge about marine systems — what we know, what we do not know, and why we do not know — and how this affects research and policy decisions.
Present:
December 7-9, 2002, La Jolla, CA, USA
Summary Report: Marine Biodiversity in the Present – The Known, Unknown and Unknowable
Past:
November 14-17, 2003, La Jolla, CA, USA
Summary Report: Marine Biodiversity – Using the Past to Inform the Future
Future:
April 22-25, 2005, La Jolla, CA, USA
