About
NASA Earthdata-Openscapes answers a NASA Earthdata call to support scientific researchers using data from NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) as they migrate workflows to the cloud.
Openscapes
Openscapes champions open, inclusive practices in environmental and Earth science to help uncover data-intensive solutions faster. We do this through our flagship Champions mentorship program, as well as through community organizing, training, and coaching, leveraging existing resources from open communities along with our own.
Our flywheel shows our approach to engaging, empowering, and amplifying research communities in open data science — how we describe kinder, better science in less time.
The NASA EarthData-Openscapes project
The overarching vision is to support scientific researchers using NASA Earthdata as they migrate their workflows to the cloud. We are doing this working with NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) over three years by:
Developing a cross-DAAC Mentor community that supports growth into confident cloud data instructors, and create, curate and use shared resources and have a tutorial review process
Empowering science teams to experiment migrating their download-intensive data analysis workflows to the cloud through a partnership with Carpentries and 2i2c
Scaling the Openscapes Champions program with DAAC Mentors to support science cohorts and amplify as many open science leaders as possible, transforming their workflows towards open, kinder science and the cloud
Blog
Blog posts about NASA Openscapes
White Paper
The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs in enabling Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud
Slides
Slides, recordings, and posters
Working with NASA Earthdata in the Cloud - January 24, 2023 - Amy Steiker, Bri Lind, Julie Lowndes, Luis López, Michele Thornton, and the NASA Openscapes Mentors. ESIP Winter Meeting “Enabling Open Science with NASA’s Earthdata in the Cloud” Session
Supporting open science as a daily practice - December 16, 2022 - Julie Lowndes, Erin Robinson, Openscapes Mentors. AGU Fall Conference Talk, “The Future is Open” session
earthaccess
: A Python Library for NASA Earthdata - December 13, 2022 - Luis López, Andrew P. Barrett, Julie Lowndes, Joseph H. Kennedy, Erin Robinson, Amy Steiker, Jessica Scheick, The NASA Openscapes mentors team. AGU Fall Conference Poster (slide)NASA Openscapes: Lessons Learned supporting Cross-DAAC User Services to migrate to the Cloud - December 13, 2022, Aaron Friesz, Alexis Hunzinger, Amy Steiker, Catalina Oaida Taglialatela, Luis López, Cassandra Nickles, Bri Lind, Mahsa Jami, Celia Ou, Julia Stewart Lowndes, Erin Robinson, NASA Openscapes DAAC Mentor Community. AGU Fall Conference Poster (slide)
Curating information to guide NASA Earthdata users into the cloud with workflow diagrams and cheatsheets - December 13, 2022 - Cassandra Nickles, Catalina Oaida Taglialatela, Julie Stewart Lowndes, Amy Steiker, Alexis Hunzinger, Aaron Friesz. AGU Fall Conference Poster (slide)
Early lessons learned from supporting end user’s transition to the cloud - November 16, 2022, Alexis Hunzinger, LAADS DAAC User Working Group 2022
NASA Openscapes Cloud Infrastructure - October 13, 2022, Luis Lopez (video)
Efforts to support end users in the journey to the cloud - September 27, 2022: Open Source Science Data Repositories Workshop 2022 Steiker, Hunzinger, López, Oaida Taglialatela, Friesz (video)
NASA Earthdata Cloud: Myths, Truths, Questions - September 7, 2022. Steiker, Heightley (NSIDC)
Efforts to support end users in the journey to the cloud - August 17, 2022: ESDIS SE TIM 2022 Oaida Taglialatela, Hunzinger, Smit, López, Steiker
NASA Briefing to Unidata - July 2022, Christine Smit
NSIDC DAAC User Working Group - May 20, 2022. Barrett, Steiker, Meier, Roebuck, Beig, Lopez, (NSIDC)
NASA Earthdata Cloud & The Cloud Paradigm - April 2022. Friesz (LP DAAC)
NASA Openscapes Lessons from Year 1 - April 21, 2022: ESDSWG Robinson, Lowndes, López
NASA Openscapes Cloud Infrastructure - February 9, 2021: NSIDC by Luis López
Community Building: The NASA Openscapes Framework - January 18, 2022: ESIP Winter Meeting
NASA Earthdata Access in the Cloud Using Open-source libraries - December 17, 2021: invited talk by Amy Steiker at the Open Science in Action Session at the AGU Fall meeting (30 minutes)
Open Project Design: Lessons from the NASA Openscapes Framework — December 17, 2021: invited talk at the Open Science in Action Session at the AGU Fall meeting (30 minutes)
Openscapes: Better Science for Future Us — December 8, 2021: invited talk about data interoperability at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) meeting co-hosted by the Mapping Sciences Committee and the Geographical Sciences Committee
Cross-DAAC Collab via Openscapes: Infusing Openscapes training, mentorship, and community building models into EOSDIS — October 26, 2021: SE TIM lightning talk by Amy Steiker
Openscapes: Better Science for Future Us — October 14, 2021: NASA’s Open Source Science for Data Processing and Archives Workshop
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- September 16, 2021: NSIDC User Working Group
- September 8, 2021: GES DISC User Working Group
Openscapes: Better Science for Future Us. Supporting NASA Earth science research teams’ migration to the cloud - August 12, 2021: LP DAAC User Working Group
Openscapes - July 6, 2021: SAFe Plenary by Amy Steiker
Better Science for Future Us - June 30, 2021: Pangeo Showcase (PANGEO Discourse, Zenodo)
NASA DAACs Openscapes Framework - March 25, 2021: NASA ESDS-ESDIS-DAACs-IMPACT Meeting
Why NASA Earthdata? Why Openscapes?
We are getting these questions a lot, so here is our take.
NASA Earth Science Data Systems missions collect Earth data, including sea ice, physical oceanography, vegetation and many other parameters – data used by researchers around the world for many different purposes, including answering pressing questions in ecology and environmental science. Further, NASA promotes open science – from the NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) program 2020 Highlights report:
Open data are the foundation of ESDS efforts to fulfill the program’s vision of accelerating scientific advancement for societal benefit through innovative Earth science data stewardship and technology development….to leverage the diversity of global Earth science communities to advance open science.
Openscapes’ long-term goal is to enable robust, inclusive, and enduring science- and data-driven solutions to global and time-sensitive challenges. We approach open science as a spectrum, as a behavior change, and as a movement. We see data analysis and stewardship as entryways to meet scientists where they are, helping them develop new skill sets and mindsets while empowering them as leaders. With NASA support, the project team and the partners, the Openscapes Framework fundamentally changes the paradigm for supporting research teams and DAAC mentors, first to work more openly with their teams on the cloud, and ultimately to advance open science!
Openscapes is co-directed by project leads Lowndes and Robinson, and operated at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), University of California Santa Barbara.
Project Leads
Julia Stewart Lowndes, PhD
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB)
lowndes at nceas.ucsb.edu; @juliesquid
Erin Robinson, MSc
Metadata Game Changers, LLC
University of Colorado, Boulder
erin@metadatagamechangers.com; @connector_erin
Project Teams
NASA-Openscapes Mentors are a cross-DAAC Mentor community that is co-creating common tutorials, resources, and teaching approaches to support researchers migrating worksflows to the Cloud.
Learn more about the NASA-Openscapes Champions — coming soon.
Partners
This project allows us to partner with organizations that share Openscapes’ values of open, reproducible, and inclusive science:
- The Carpentries teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. Openscapes is joining The Carpentries through this project as a Silver Member, which includes four Carpentries workshops per year and instructor training opportunities to the NASA DAAC community.
- 2i2c develops, deploys, customizes, and manages open source tools and cloud services for interactive computing in research and education. They deploy community-driven infrastructure, inspired by use-cases such as the UC Berkeley DataHubs and the Pangeo project, that provides easy “one-click-to-cloud” access with Jupyter Notebooks through the web browser designed to reduce the startup burden for new learners, and this approach will also benefit the NASA DAAC community.