Visualizing Earth Science
Ezekiel Tulagan
David M. Hassenzahl is the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the California State University at Chico. An internationally recognized scholar of sustainability and risk analysis, his research focuses on incorporating scientific information and expertise into public decision. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Science and Paleontology from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His efforts in climate change education have been supported by the National Science Foundation, and recognition of his work includes the Society for Risk Analysis Outstanding Educator Award and the UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. Hassenzahl is a Senior Fellow of the National Council for Science and the Environment, a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, and president of the Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Hassenzahl worked in the private sector as an environmental manager, and as an inspector for the (San Francisco) Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
Mary Catherine Hager is a professional science writer and editor specializing in life and earth sciences. She received a double-major B.A. in environmental science and biology from the University of Virginia and an M.S. in zoology from the University of Georgia. Ms. Hager worked as an editor for an environmental consulting firm and as a senior editor for a scientific reference publisher. For more than 20 years she has written and edited for environmental science, biology, and ecology textbooks for high school and college. Additionally, she has published articles in environmental trade magazines and edited federal and state reports addressing wetlands conservation issues. Her writing and editing pursuits are a natural outcome of her scientific training and curiosity, coupled with her love of reading and effective communication.
High-variety earth science data is being produced at an increasing volume and velocity to power environmental research, reinforced by the advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and the widespread deployment of internet-connected sensors (Sermet and Demir, 2022a). Utilizing this enormous data set for context-aware and on-site analysis that is enhanced with realistic visualizations and event dynamics transcends the capabilities and reach of traditional information systems for environmental management (Kolditz et al., 2019). High volume data from diverse sources requires integrated and interactive solutions to allow professionals, academics, decision makers, and the public to perceive the complete picture regarding the consequences of climate change as well as the environmental issues revolving around a community and to discover actionable knowledge upon context-informed analysis (Rink et al., 2020).
Mixed reality and serious gaming present immense potential in earth sciences to overcome the challenges of engaging stakeholders and community members in decision-making and disaster preparedness, communicating huge environmental data within a geospatial context, and simulating non-replicable extreme events for evaluation (Sermet and Demir, 2020). Furthermore, the incorporation of gamification and interaction into data exploration and decision-making for risk reduction and environmental management shows significant potential for participatory planning, collaborative learning, and building conceptual understanding of physical phenomena and processes (Teague et al., 2021).
The primary purpose of this research topic is to encourage the development and evaluation of virtual and augmented reality experiences as well as serious gaming approaches with application in the earth science and water resources domains (Sermet and Demir, 2022b). We intend to attract more attention and shine a light to the potential and utility of key research areas summarized as follows: a) Hydrological data exploration and visualization; b) In-situ geospatial visualizations and community scenario simulations; c) Visual analytics tools and workflows for spatiotemporal data; d) Disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery; e) First-responder training and emergency response; f) Participatory decision support for shared-vision planning and scientifically informed policymaking; g) Public outreach and educational tools for water resources; h) AI-augmented intelligent and immersive cyberinfrastructures in environmental sciences; and i) Next-generation hydrological information and decision support tools enhanced with immersive technologies. As part of this Research Topic, submitted manuscripts demonstrate the usefulness of immersive reality approaches in some of the aforementioned areas. An overview of these articles are provided below to convey the wide range of applications within this scope.
Kehl et al. investigate visualization design approaches for 4D spatio-temporal data, in particular coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian fluid-flow. Such approaches are particularly useful for the analysis of oceanic processes based on multivariate trajectories and attributes. The authors extensively discuss the design process of contextual, clutter-reduced visualization and evaluate existing approaches with respect to perceptual principles. They introduce a novel color-mapping approach for 3D velocity tensors employing transparency-modulated, coloured image composition. The resulting approach was applied to a plastic-tracing case study, visualizing algae accumulating on the surfaces of marine plastic particles affected by the hydrodynamic velocities in the ocean.
Graebling et al. present a prototype for a Virtual Experiment Information System for the Underground Research Laboratory in Mont Terri, Switzerland. The lab has been operational for over 25 years and a large number of in-situ experiments related to the storage of nuclear waste are conducted there. The authors combine a large number of heterogeneous data sets related to those experiments, the lab itself as well as the surrounding geology within an interactive 3D framework based on Unity. The framework features intuitive visualizations of a large variety of data sets that are in part file-based and in part live data loaded from the operational databases of the lab. The approach features both observation and simulation data, enabling complex visualization scenarios such as sensor measurements changes in the context of geological structures and simulation results of saturation- or temperature changes.
Helbig et al. put forth a visual analytics platform that is equipped with a digital twin environment and geovisualization capabilities to allow the investigation of heterogeneous and spatiotemporal data through virtual reality. The immersive application for the analysis of environmental mobile sensor data in an urban context was also built on Unity Game Engine with components for multi-format data integration, performance optimizations, an intuitive GUI and 3D representations, and analytics. Their work showcases how digital twin-based immersive analytics environments can enhance situation evaluation and decision-making due to the potential to integrate sensor data, crowdsourced data, environmental parameters, weather conditions, and routes and infrastructure.
In summation, immersive technologies as well as mechanisms of gamification hold a substantial potential in the prospect of creating the next-generation of decision support and information systems in earth sciences. Although many challenges remain in such technologies and approaches adoption at a wider scale, the literature clearly indicates the feasibility as well as their immense potential justifying further research and development in an interdisciplinary manner.
Copyright 2022 Demir, Sermet and Rink. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Learn how AGI engages communities worldwide with educational resources, webinars, contests, and events that promote earth science awareness. Read the latest report, Earth Science Week Engages Communities Worldwide, to view the statistics and initiatives from Earth Science Week 2023.
Ecology and Environmental Science are running into a 'big data' era. The unprecedented data sources provide opportunities for novel scientific exploration and solutions to real-world problems, which, however, usually requires robust quantitative analysis and informative visualization. This course aims to increase students' literacy and hands-on skills on common quantitative methods in ecology and environmental sciences, including accessing and curating data, statistical inference, regression, data-based predictions (also known as machine learning), and visualizing the results. Students will be using public data sets from organismal to landscape scales, including spatial data sets from the Google Earth Engine platform. Example codes will be provided in both Python and R.
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What are you working on at JPL?I'm doing the programming for a data visualization tool to help researchers who are using the Terra satellite analyze wildfire data and how high these fires inject into the atmosphere. That's a question scientists are really concerned with because you have all these fires burning up matter, and all the matter that they burn goes into the air and just floats around for many, many days afterward. We don't really know how exactly that affects global climate change, so it's good to take a look at the data.
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