ESIP Update: Note from Megan + Links to Celebrate

Note from our Community Director

Hello ESIP!

As part of my report to the ESIP Board last month, I shared a number of exciting highlights from ESIP Collaboration Areas. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we know it can sometimes be hard to keep up with all the great work going on in ESIP spaces! See something that sounds interesting to you? Join the next telecon! And join us at the July Meeting, where many of these groups will host breakout sessions.

• Over the last quarter, collaboration areas have engaged more than 500 individuals in virtual telecons. The IT&I Committee, along with the Cloud Computing and Data Readiness Clusters have drawn some of the largest crowds.

• The Community Resilience Cluster just published “How Can Earth Scientists Contribute to Community Resilience? Challenges and Recommendations” and has also recently launched a reading group in their virtual telecons. 

• The Research Artifact Citation Cluster just published an Eos article “Credit Where Credit Is Due”, which argues that “promoting open, inclusive, transparent, and traceable science requires that scientists revamp the ways in which we acknowledge all manner of contributions to research.”

• In their guest blog, the Biological Data Standards Cluster discussed their Primer for Data Managers and how data standards are critical to making data FAIR.

• Also recently published on the ESIP Website, Marion McKenzie (2020-2021 Community Fellow for the Community Data Cluster) shared The “Cluster of [Positive] Discomfort,” where she shares her experience as a Fellow, along with a poignant look at the lessons learned from working on place-based issues of environmental justice.

• The Information Quality Cluster in collaboration with the Australia/New Zealand Data Quality Interest Group recently published a significant paper on dataset quality reporting, entitled “Global Community Guidelines for Documenting, Sharing, and Reusing Quality Information of Individual Digital Datasets.”

• The Machine Learning Cluster continues work on a white paper, Practical AI for Geospatial Data-driven Applied Science, after making major contributions to A Review of Earth Artificial Intelligence, published early this year. They also continue to invite contributions to their Awesome-Earth-AI List.

• The Education Committee is hard at work planning a Teacher Workshop with the theme of Sustainability to be held at the July ESIP Meeting and has continued their Out2Lunch webinars sharing #EarthScienceData tools for K-12 teachers. 
• The Soil Ontology & Informatics Cluster has been hosting a Soil Semantic Resources Webinar Series, check out their YouTube Playlist.

Megan Carter
ESIP Community Director
megancarter@esipfed.org

ESIP News and Events

Data Help Desk at EGU 2022 this week

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) hosts their annual meeting in Vienna this week. ESIP is supporting another virtual Data Help Desk during the conference. Read more on the EGU blog and check out the YouTube playlist they pulled together with different #EarthScienceData resources. 

Make sure to follow @EarthDataHelp and follow along, chime in, and share resources #EGU22 #DataHelpDesk. 
 

Moving into the Cloud?

To help data managers avoid turbulence, the Cloud Computing Cluster is shaking up their routine and hosting an open forum about the costs and trade-offs between data resolution, storage requirements, and commercial vs DIY cloud solutions.

Invited speakers include Rich Signell from the USGS,  Robert Casey from IRIS, Alejandro Flores from Boise State University, and Zach Wills from the National Water Center. Join the telecon Monday May 23 at 1 p.m. EDT.
 

Laying the bridge between soil data, knowledge, and semantics

Join the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster to explore current and past soil data collections, ontologies, vocabularies, data models, and generally geek out about soil data! With this series of three workshops, the group will strive to answer the question: What would our ideal soil data community be and how can we create better resources?

Learn more about the workshop series and sign up via this Google Form.

What's Happening in Earth Science Data

To read…

• Open and Fair Data in Tropical Forests (Eos)
• An Unprecedented View Inside a Hurricane (Eos)
• The Web3 Movement’s Quest to Build a ‘Can’t Be Evil’ Internet (WIRED)
• Do we still need teams? (Harvard Business Review)
• Pathways to Impact: Meet Neera Nundy, Conversations with data science for social impact leaders on their career journeys (DataDotOrg)

Tune in…

Introducing a New Dataset: Water Utility Service Area Boundaries (May 26)

The Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) has released  a methodology for approximating water service area boundaries and a provisional national map of the results. This data can help to improve the design and implementation of water and climate programs at the federal, state, and community level.

Join a webinar with EPIC and its collaborators on May 26 at 2 p.m. EDT and read more on the EPIC blog. 
 

Humanitarian Applications Using NASA Earth Observations (June 14-23)

This 4-part introductory training will focus on using NASA data products for monitoring human settlements and landscapes during armed conflict and forced displacement. This ARSET training is the first dedicated to humanitarian applications of NASA satellite imagery with topics including monitoring urban damage, mapping refugee settlement dynamics, and gauging climate hazards at refugee settlements. For each topic, the group will discuss relevant satellite sensors and methodologies, data access and analysis using Google Earth Engine, as well as assumptions, opportunities, and limitations of various remote sensing-based approaches in humanitarian applications.
 

Check Out…

ESCO Review: Atmospheric Composition Variable Standard Name Convention (Due June 1)

NASA's Earth Science Data and Information Systems (ESDIS) Standards Coordination Office (ESCO) is requesting comments on the following proposed Atmospheric Composition Variable Standard Name Convention (ESDS-RFC-043).

If you or your team member can review this document, please send names, email addresses, and Earthdata login usernames to esco-staff@lists.nasa.gov. The ESCO staff will add your names as reviewers in the Jama system. You may also send any questions about the review to the ESCO staff at esco-staff@lists.nasa.gov.
 

Funding Opportunity through NASA Open Source Science Initiative (OSSI)

The Open Source Science Initiative (OSSI) at NASA welcomes proposals relevant to its goals to expand open science for the Science Mission Directorate. See section 3.6.1 for more details.