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CIESIN associate research scientist Susana Adamo is guest editor with Haydea Izazola of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, Mexico, of a special issue of the journal Population and Environment on the theme of “Human Migration and the Environment.” The special issue (Volume 32, Nos. 2-3) presents new research on the complex links between migration and the environment, including both the effects of environmental change on human migration patterns and the impacts of migration dynamics on environmental conditions in sending and receiving regions. The seven original research papers and the guest editorial by Adamo and Izazola are available through SpringerLink.

Area of intervention of the Côte du Sud Initiative, Haiti. Source: CIESIN, 2010.

The Côte du Sud Initiative (CSI), which focuses on the southwestern coastal region of Haiti, launched the first stage of a multi-year program on January 4. The CSI is being implemented through detailed planning processes and sustained investment targeted over twenty years. The initiative is structured along four main thematic lines: natural resource management, social services, economic development and infrastructure, and governance and disaster preparedness. Technical teams have been designed to enable participation among community members, local actors, and research institutions. The CSI was created by a group of Haitian and international organizations, including the Earth Institute, with a strong focus on coordination, national ownership, and building the institutional capacity of the government and local partners. CIESIN is leading the Earth Institute’s work during the planning and coordination phases, and is supporting data collection, mentoring, capacity building and management, and spatial analysis and data integration.

Activities during the first year which CIESIN will support include comprehensive baseline studies by themes; development of a consistent monitoring system throughout the southwestern region for agriculture, land use, livelihoods and child and maternal health care; and preparation of five-year planning and visioning programs at both local and regional scales. Climate and hydrology data will be collected in real time. Incentives to restore ecosystem services and simultaneously reduce poverty will be tested. Integrated development projects will be implemented in targeted areas such as the Port-à-Piment watershed, where previous research has been conducted.

CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy and senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin have conducted an assessment of environmental performance measurement for the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency December 14-16 in Cairo. The goal is to better understand the data available for reporting required by multilateral environmental agreements and global indicator efforts such as the Environmental Performance Index, and to advise the agency on data collection and management systems to support such efforts.

CIESIN director Robert Chen and senior information specialist Joe Schumacher joined more than 18,000 participants at the 2010 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting in San Francisco December 13–17. Chen gave an oral presentation co-authored with CIESIN colleagues Marc Levy, Sandra Baptista, and Susana Adamo, “Climate Risk and Vulnerability in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico Region: Interactions with Spatial Population and Land Cover Change.” As part of a series of presentations held at NASA’s exhibit booth he also demonstrated how scientists can contribute data to the Polar Information Commons. Schumacher worked with other NASA Earth Science Division staff in support of NASA’s booth, one of the most popular at the conference. Senior digital archivist Robert Downs also co-authored a poster presentation on “Packaging Software Assets for Reuse” with Chris Mattmann and James Marshall of NASA.

Combining socioeconomic and environmental data to help prepare for and respond to natural disasters such as landslides is the subject of an article in the 2010 NASA publication, Sensing Our Planet. “On Shaky Ground” examines recent efforts following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti to improve understanding of human-environment interactions that can affect vulnerability to disasters. Dalia Kirschbaum, a researcher from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, talks about how she combined satellite rainfall data with land cover maps and CIESIN’s Gridded Population of the World (GPW) data to help identify the areas of highest susceptibility to landslide in Haiti. Alex Fischer, program coordinator for the Haiti Regeneration Project (HRI), discusses how improved understanding of population-environment-disaster linkages has informed planning for a major integrated development initiative in southwest Haiti. Fischer was one of two CIESIN staff members who witnessed the devastation of the Haiti earthquake first hand at the beginning of 2010.

Sensing Our Planet is an annual collection of articles on applications of Earth science data. GPW, now in its third version, is distributed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN.

CIESIN deputy director Marc Levy participated in a workshop regarding climate change assessment, convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Berlin, November 1–3. The workshop was designed to help ensure there is a process in place for generating suitable socioeconomic pathways that can be used in connection with climate model outputs, for adequate understanding of issues of adaptation and mitigation in the IPCC’s ongoing Fifth Assessment Report. Socioeconomic pathways are descriptions of the possible evolution of socioeconomic conditions that are central to understanding climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation, accompanied by quantitative portrayals of select aspects of those pathways.

The SEDAC Data Search Tool is a Google Search Appliance (GSA) implementation of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) Data Set Catalog, providing quick access to data and related resources such as data visualizations, data downloads, Web sites, Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata, and citations via metadata keyword searches. SEDAC data holdings cover a wide range of topics including climate, conservation, governance, hazards, health, population, poverty, and sustainability. Users may input their own search terms, and/or choose from an extensive SEDAC vocabulary and International Standards Organization (ISO) themes to target data of interest. SEDAC is operated by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University in New York.

Senior geospatial developer Greg Yetman participated in the 12^th meeting of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association in Singapore October 19-22. He presented a paper on pilot efforts to develop improved global roads data, co-authored with CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN, Columbia University and Matthew Steil. He also presented a forthcoming paper that describes a Web-based system for estimating population exposed to cyclone storm surge, co-authored with Yuri Gorokhovich and Ceyhun Ozcelik. In addition, he was a moderator at three sessions and at the board meeting was elected chair of the technical committee. CIESIN Geospatial Division associate director Mark Becker was elected to the board at the council meeting on Monday, replacing Greg, as a representative of a GSDI-Related Global Initiative.

The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) has released a new data set, Effects of Climate Change on Global Food Production under SRES Emissions and Socio-Economic Scenarios. The data set was developed by scientists from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

The European Forum for Geostatistics (EFGS) 2010, held October 5–7 in Tallinn, Estonia, was the venue for two papers presented by CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin on the creation and use of gridded data products from national population statistics. Presentations at the annual forum described a variety of methodologies for aggregating small area census data, as well as disaggregating coarser to smaller areas using ancillary data such as remote sensing-derived impervious surfaces, transportation infrastructure, and cell phone usage. One of de Sherbinin's presentations discussed the use of population and poverty grids, developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, in different application areas such as hazard vulnerability and health. The second presentation described the methodologies used to develop these population and poverty grids. The conference offered the opportunity for discussions on data sharing and for networking with representatives of European statistical agencies to learn about methodologies and applications of gridded data in a European context.

Earth Institute Fellow Alexandra Morel.

Alexandra Morel has joined CIESIN for a two-year appointment as an Earth Institute Fellow. Morel holds a PhD and a MSc in environmental change and management from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, England, where her research focused on the environmental impacts of oil palm cultivation in Borneo using radar and optical remote sensing. She also analyzed various market mechanisms being developed to reduce tropical deforestation, including sustainability certification and REDD. At the Earth Institute, Alex plans to research the role that global trade in food, such as vegetable oils, has as a driver of land use change.

CIESIN hosted the annual meeting of the NASA User Services Working Group (USWG) at the Lamont and Morningside Heights campuses on September 21–23. The USWG coordinates the user support and outreach activities of the twelve Earth Science Data Centers in the NASA Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS). CIESIN director Robert Chen, who serves as manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (SEDAC), welcomed the group and provided an overview of CIESIN and the Earth Institute. Joe Schumacher, who has just begun a term as vice chair of the USWG, gave an update on recent SEDAC activities. The USWG helps to ensure that EOSDIS data and services are responsive to the needs of the Earth science and applications community and as accessible and user friendly as possible.

CIESIN and the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program program, of the Earth Institute of Columbia University, co-hosted a workshop September 21 and 22 at Lamont Campus in Palisades, New York, to explore new opportunities for improving the collection and distribution of digital soil information. The workshop, “Making Soil Information Widely Available: From the Satellite to the Mobile Phone,” brought together 25 scientists and information technologists from the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS), GlobalSoilMap.Net, the Earth Institute, Google, NASA, and others. The group identified strategies to integrate new NASA Earth observing missions, cloud computing, and crowd sourcing to improve the effectiveness of planned soil information services. Such services will support plans to increase crop yields in Africa and to dramatically increase the quality of global soil maps.

CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin demonstrated the visualization tool, TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer, at an event sponsored by the World Bank in Washington, D.C., September 9 to launch their Apps for Development Competition. The competition is open to software developers and development practitioners to develop useful software tools and data visualizations that use World Bank data. The demonstration focused on using TerraViva! to access World Bank development indicator data and other spatial and statistical databases, including key data sets the World Bank has made free as part of its new Open Data Initiative. A presentation on SEDAC data and TerraViva! was also given by de Sherbinin to a group of 20 staff from the World Bank Development Data Group and other selected divisions. TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer is a standalone software application, developed under the auspices of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, that enables the viewing of a wide range of socioeconomic and environmental variables and layers, including satellite-based data.

NASA conducts an annual survey of users of the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) data center users. SEDAC encourages all of its users to participate. Your comments will enable us to improve our services.

Within the coming week SEDAC registered users will receive an email invitation from Claes Fornell International (CFI) Group on behalf of NASA to participate in a Web-based survey about the quality and utility of SEDAC products and services, and the ease of access to SEDAC resources. It takes approximately 10 minutes to complete this anonymous questionnaire and optional comment fields are provided to address user concerns.

If you would like to take the survey and did not receive an invitation from CFI Group, please contact CFI Group at nasasurvey@cfigroup.com. You will need to provide your e-mail address and specify that you are a SEDAC data user. Please do not forward the invitation to others but refer them to the above email address.

Please participate! Your feedback affects our future performance, helps to identify science needs, and helps to justify NASA's continuing investment in EOSDIS data systems. SEDAC is one of twelve NASA EOSDIS data centers evaluated by this survey.

CIESIN led outreach activities at two venues in Pennsylvania recently, with an emphasis on the capabilities of TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer, a map viewer and standalone software application that lets users visualize hundreds of socioeconomic and environmental variables and layers, including a range of satellite-based data. In Pittsburgh, CIESIN geographic information specialist Malanding Jaiteh presented TerraViva! at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) held July 31–August 6. The presentation was part of a workshop on NASA Tools for Remote Sensing in Ecology Research. At Dickinson College in Carlisle August 11–12, senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin led the second half of a NASA Global Climate Change Education workshop structured around the use of SEDAC data products to enhance understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. Hands-on training with TerraViva! was also provided. Twenty professors from Dickinson College and area community colleges participated in the workshop, representing disciplines from the humanities to the Earth sciences.

Participants in the 16th TGICA meeting in Boulder, Colorado, August 4-6.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is undertaking its fifth assessment of the science, impacts, and policy implications of climate change. In support of this process, the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis (TGICA) held its 16th meeting August 4–6 in Boulder, Colorado, hosted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. CIESIN director Robert Chen participated in the meeting in his capacity as an ex officio member of the TGICA and co-manager of the IPCC Data Distribution Centre (DDC). Information scientist Xiaoshi Xing also attended as an observer. Issues addressed at the meeting included how best to meet the needs of the international assessment community for new socioeconomic scenarios, how to improve guidance materials provided by the TGICA, and how best to update and improve the DDC itself.

Established in 1996, the TGICA facilitates the distribution and application of climate change-related data and scenarios in support of the IPCC assessment process. The TGICA serves as the oversight body for the DDC, which is jointly operated by the British Atmospheric Data Center (BADC) in the United Kingdom, the World Data Center Climate (WDCC) in Germany, and CIESIN.

CIESIN senior digital archivist Robert Downs participated in the 2010 Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) Workshop held at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, August 2-4. He made two presentations; the first, “Tools for Reusing Earth Science Software,” was co-authored with Neal Most and James Marshall, both of INNOVIM and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and with Chris Mattmann of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Later in the week he gave a presentation, “Sustainable Governance for Long-Term Stewardship of Earth Science Data,” which was co-authored with CIESIN director Robert Chen.

CIESIN associate research scientist Susana Adamo led a five-day workshop on the use of remote sensing in social science research, held at the Colegio de México (COLMEX), Mexico City, June 28–July 2. Participants included academics, researchers, and public officials. The workshop was part of the Summer Workshops on Research Methods on Population and Territory offered by the Centro de Estudios Demográfia, Urbanos y Ambientales (CEDUA), a center at COLMEX dedicated to demographic, urban, and environmental studies, and was held under the auspices of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by CIESIN, for which Adamo is a project scientist. The workshop was coordinated by Landy Sánchez Peña, assistant professor at CEDUA and general coordinator of the Summer Workshops, and workshop materials were prepared by CIESIN geographic information specialist Malanding Jaiteh. Topics included an introduction to remote sensing; application areas within the social sciences; image interpretation and classification methods; use of Google Earth imagery; and use of remote sensing data in GIS and statistical packages. One session involved exploring global data sets using TerraViva! SEDAC Viewer, a map viewer and standalone software application developed by SEDAC that lets users visualize and integrate socioeconomic data with other data layers, including satellite-based data. In addition, Jose Luis Ornelas of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) gave a talk on remote sensing resources there, and Marcia Castro of the Harvard School of Public Health discussed the use of remotely sensed imagery in population studies.

A Superfund site is an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste could potentially expose nearby people and ecosystems to harmful contaminants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains a National Priorities List (NPL) for the United States and its territories that identifies more than 1,600 sites as posing the most serious threats and the most likely to require long-term cleanup. Until now, information about the precise location and boundaries of these sites has been difficult to access and to link with data on nearby residents.

Utilizing the US Census Grids database developed by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), CIESIN, with funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), has prepared a new data resource on populations in proximity to more than 1,500 Superfund NPL sites. The resource offers an improved data set of NPL site boundaries in geographic information system (GIS) format, based on data for 1996 from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and for 2008 from the U.S. EPA Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS). Estimated total populations for the year 2000 residing within one and four miles of each site, and associated demographic characteristics based on the year 2000 census, are provided in spreadsheet format. These data are expected to be of value to researchers and decision makers concerned with the assessment, remediation, and community outreach related to Superfund NPL sites.