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.

NASA Openscapes

Since 2021, NASA Openscapes has been improving users’ experiences with NASA Earthdata through a coupled focus on infrastructure development and teaching as a tight feedback loop – we’ve built a mechanism that can rapidly identify problems as we bring people together to solve them. With the growth of NASA Earthdata and migrating data to the cloud over the past decades, ESDIS knew they would need a new way to support users.“The impact of Openscapes is unprecedented at NASA” said Dr. Justin Rice, Deputy Project Manager Data Systems, ESDIS, in March 2023, two years into this effort. 

NASA Openscapes is a mentor community of 50+ user support staff across the 12 NASA Earthdata data centers (DAACs) who are deeply knowledgeable about the very different types and applications of Earthdata, as well as cloud infrastructure for geospatial data analysis, and how users’ workflows must change when shifting from a download to a cloud computing paradigm. This community is enriched by collaborating with the open science community beyond NASA, leveraging and contributing to existing resources from open communities along with our own. NASA Openscapes mentors have led 30+ workshops and 50+ talks supporting users, and created an open source Earthdata Cloud Cookbook of reusable tutorials and code. We maintain and develop JupyterHub cloud infrastructure in partnership with 2i2c, and currently have 530 users in our hub, and 937 distinct users from all our workshops. We also developed the earthaccess python library, which has dramatically improved the user experience accessing Earth data programmatically – a requirement for accessing NASA Earthdata Cloud. earthaccess has thousands of downloads each week and 100+ projects depend on it in their analytical pipelines. We teach through a variety of online and in person events, including our flagship Champions Program.


Openscapes is an independent organization launched in 2018; it is an open source approach and movement that helps researchers and those supporting research find each other and feel empowered to conduct data-intensive science.

Flywheel Preprint

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. See our preprint: The Openscapes Flywheel

The Openscapes Flywheel: the orange hexagonal logo with 6 parts of the flywheel: Welcome; Create space and place; invest in learning and trust; work openly; leverage common workflows, skills, tools; inspire

Openscapes Flywheel (Robinson & Lowndes 2022). The Flywheel concept was developed by Jim Collins in the book Good to Great. No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.

The NASA Openscapes Framework

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:

  1. 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

  2. Empowering science teams to experiment migrating their download-intensive data analysis workflows to the cloud through a partnership with Carpentries and 2i2c

  3. 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

Project Impact Summary Years 1-3

NASA Openscapes is a multi-year effort to grow a cross-DAAC Mentor community supporting Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud. Looking back from where we started in February 2020: we have changed the way NASA teaches Cloud. There is now a way to teach Cloud, and we have built and supported a growing community of learner-oriented empathetic teachers who are user-support staff from across 11 DAACs. These “NASA Openscapes Mentors” practice open science daily to create a common set of tutorials, organize and lead virtual, hybrid, and in-person workshops, and have a feedback & review process for tutorial creation and teaching. The successes and momentum of NASA Openscapes is due to the Mentors having paid time as part of their jobs to collaborate and learn together. NASA Openscapes work is not extra: it is the “how” to do the work aligned with DAAC and broader NASA goals. We are appreciative of DAAC Managers and NASA leadership for supporting Mentors’ time.

In Year 3, we have focused on “operational hardening” to formalize processes, move toward sustainability, communicate impact, and engage more expansively with the broader open community. We report on this as a new first section, adding to the sections included in Year 1&2 Annual Reports. 2023 is the Year of Open Science, and we have continued to be active members of the global open science community, amplifying NASA work and connecting with and amplifying collaborator efforts. Throughout this project, we have not only used technology, but we’ve collaborated with technology builders to improve the user/learner experience for these technologies for Open science and Cloud. This includes 2i2c and Jupyter, Quarto from Posit/RStudio; OPeNDAP, MATLAB from Mathworks, the R community, Coiled, as well as connected communities across NASA Earthdata, NOAA Fisheries, EPA, Black in Marine Science (BIMS), BWEEMS, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and beyond.

We approach this work as movement building. We developed the Openscapes Flywheel, an open source tool – we reach for this tool for planning, progress, and impact tracking as we would reach for R and Quarto for data analysis and documentation. We developed it with NASA Earth science Mentors, using the concept where transformations occur from consistently doing key activities that add up over time (Collins). The Flywheel supports teams across NASA DAACs to to grow morale and technical capacity across their organizations by (1) Engage bright spots, through welcoming them and creating space and place; (2) Empower a learning culture through investing in learning and trust and working openly (3) Amplify Open science leaders, through leveraging the common and inspiring the bigger movement (Robinson & Lowndes 2022). 

Through this work, some highlights of impact to date:

(1 Engage): 11 DAACs participating (NSIDC, PO.DAAC, LP DAAC, GES DISC, ASDC, ASF, ORNL, SEDAC, GHRC, OB.DAAC, LAADS) (and we will join the 12th CDDIS’s first User Working Group in January 2024); have a JupyterHub and Notebook-Quarto-GitHub workflow for documentation and publishing; have co-created a consistent set of tutorials, teaching style, and mindset; co-led the 2021 Cloud Hackathon and 2022+2023 Champions programs; have documented our work through the Flywheel publication and Approach Guide; and have given many “imagine what’s possible” talks & keynotes about NASA Openscapes work – including the global announcement of Quarto and a talk on Documenting Things that describes 3 approaches to onboarding NASA Mentors. 

(2 Empower): Mentors have led 10+ workshops internally with DAAC staff and externally with researchers; developed the Earthdata Cloud Cookbook; Reused tutorials, slides, graphics and facilitation and open practices; were more aware cross-DAAC, less recreating; from user feedback developed Cheatsheets and the earthaccess python library; wrote the Value of Hosted JupyterHubs (White paper RFI); Collaborating on Hackweeks, developed 2i2c access guidelines and onboard/offboard approach; and also started meeting regularly with Openscapes Mentors from NASA, EPA, Fred Hutch, and Pathways to Open Science, connecting about challenges and opportunities beyond NASA – we developed coaching skills that make us better open data science mentors and co-authored a preprint called  Shifting institutional culture to develop climate solutions with Open Science that is now in peer-review. We now support R and MATLAB users in 2 ways (as we do python users): Python, R, and MATLAB part of the 2i2c JupyterHub (via corn environment); and we teach how to work in these languages: partnering with Mathworks and Carl Boettiger, who have created `earthaccess` equivalent approaches and identifying needs for dev and teaching to support.

(3 Amplify): Mentors are amplifying across-DAACs and beyond: Career advancement & bringing mindset to new places; Speaking up in other meetings (User Needs TIM, TRAIN, Cloud Playground conversations); Connecting & consulting based on experiences - Pathfinder for 2i2c, comparing w/ SMCE; AWS; Engaging beyond (Pangeo Forge, LoL, pyOpenSci).

From one Mentor, Cassandra Nickles (PO.DAAC):

Openscapes has created a collaborative environment for DAAC staff to collectively support open science initiatives for NASA Earthdata users. It enables us to work more openly with other DAACs toward our common goal of supporting the Earthdata ecosystem. We’ve developed awesome material to help Earthdata users such asworkflow cheatsheets, a python package (earthaccess), and data recipes hosted in the cross-DAACNASA Earthdata Cloud Cookbook. Perhaps just as important as what we’ve done however, are mindsets we’ve grown into along the way. It’s okay to share imperfect works in progress. The virtual environment can be conducive to laughter and connection. Ideas are not too big or too small to share. We are better at dreaming and implementing the future together.

Blog

We are cross-posting news blog posts about NASA Openscapes from our main openscapes.org blog.

Additional blogs about our work:

White Paper: The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs

The Value of Hosted JupyterHubs in enabling Open NASA Earth Science in the Cloud - Nickles et al. 2023.

This is a response from NASA Openscapes to NASA Request for Information (RFI) NNH23ZDA005L: Scientific Data and Computing Architecture to Support Open Science.

Slides

Slides, recordings, and posters


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 global Earth science communities to advance open science.

Openscapes’ long-term goal is to enable robust, 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!

Project Team

Julia Stewart Lowndes, PhD
Openscapes
Project Lead 2024-present; Project Co-Lead 2020-2024
julia at openscapes.org

Erin Robinson, MSc
Metadata Game Changers
Project Co-Lead 2020-2024

NASA Openscapes Mentors are a community of 50+ user support staff across the NASA Earthdata data centers (DAACs) who are deeply knowledgeable about the very different types and applications of Earthdata, as well as cloud infrastructure for geospatial data analysis, and how users’ workflows must change when shifting from a download to a cloud computing paradigm.

Openscapes Core Team supports mentors through coordinating, teaching, role-modeling open science, giving feedback, and co-developing tools and practices with the community.

Partners

This project allows us to partner with organizations that share Openscapes’ values of open science:

  • 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.
  • The Carpentries teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide. The Carpentries supported mentors with Instructor Training through in Years 1-3.

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