Bob Cook, ORNL DAAC
Sunday, April 19, 1:00- 5:00PM
Room: 1105
Early career scientists and those who would like to make data management easier and to improve the usability of their data.
Scientists spend considerable time conducting field studies and experiments, analyzing the data collected, and writing research papers, but an often overlooked activity is effectively managing the resulting data.
The purpose of this workshop is to provide guidance on fundamental data management practices that investigators should perform during the course of data collection to improve the usability of their data sets. The target audience is early career scientists (graduate students, post-docs), but is open to any researchers who would benefit from developing better data management skills. Faculty members who would like to include exercises on best practices for preparing data as part of their curricula are encouraged to attend. Topics covered will include data structure, quality control, and data documentation. We will also discuss the elements of an effective data management plan for use in grant proposals and project planning. Workshop participants must bring their own laptop to participate in hands-on activities and are encouraged to bring their own data sets, which instructors will assist in organizing. By following the practices taught in this workshop, your data will be less prone to error, more efficiently structured for analysis, and more readily understandable for any future questions that they might help address.
Antonio Mannino
Tuesday, April 21, 12:45-1:30PM
Room: 1105
About this Workshop
The Arctic region is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, triggering rapid social and economic changes and impacting both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Yet, our understanding of critical processes and interactions along the Arctic land-ocean interface is limited. Arctic-COLORS (Arctic-COastal Land Ocean inteRactions) is a Field Campaign Scoping Study funded by NASA's Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program that aims to improve understanding and prediction of land-ocean interactions in a rapidly changing Arctic coastal zone, and assess vulnerability, response, feedbacks and resilience of coastal ecosystems, communities and natural resources to current and future pressures.
This Town-Hall invites the broader research community to learn more about the objectives of the Arctic-COLORS Field Campaign, and become engaged in the development of the initial study design and implementation concept.
Monday, April 20, 4:00-5:00PM
Room: 1102
Ralph Dubayah
Tuesday, April 21, 6:00-7:30PM
Room: 1105
About This Workshop
NASA and ISRO are jointly developing the NISAR mission for launch around 2020. NISAR comprises an L and S band SAR and includes both dual--polarization backscatter observations, interferometric capability, and other modes. The current baseline is for NISAR to have complete global coverage every 12 days at fine spatial resolution. The mission advanced to Phase B in February 2015.
NISAR has four Carbon Cycle and Ecosystem (CC&E) focus areas: (1) biomass; (2) disturbance; (3) agriculture; and (4) wetlands/inundation. As part of its Phase B activities, the NISAR Science Definition Team (SDT) is preparing a calibration and validation plan. The cal/val plan will be used to develop, calibrate and validate NISAR algorithms for producing data products in each of these four areas pre--launch, and to validate data products post--launch to ensure that the mission meets its science requirements. Calibration and validation normally include a wide variety activities such as the identification of appropriate global field sites, the acquisition and processing of existing and new airborne and spaceborne radar data, the collection of field plot data suitable for algorithm development and testing, and coordination and collaboration with outside missions and field experiments, among others.
The NISAR SDT seeks input and involvement from the NASA CC&E community to appropriately inform its cal/val planning and to leverage the full scope of their activities relevant to the development and execution of NISAR.
At this town hall meeting, we will review the NISAR mission and present initial SDT planning on cal/val. We will then have an open discussion to consider various aspects of the cal/val process and how it can be improved. Some example questions that may be addressed are: Where should new SAR data be collected and over which biomes/locations? What field data are needed to calibrate and validate algorithms, and are new field experiments required? What existing activities can be leveraged to provide needed calibration and validation? How should NISAR coordinate with international missions and programs, such as the ESA BIOMASS mission, or the CEOS cal/val working group? How should data and algorithms being used for cal/val be made available? What are the mechanisms by which scientists outside the SDT can contribute to cal/val?
We believe NASA's CC&E community has an important role to play in the development and success of NISAR. We further hope that involvement in the calibration and validation process will help build NASA investigator expertise in the understanding, processing and application of SAR remote sensing data in preparation for NISAR.
