Earth’s Data Ecosystem

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting is the world’s largest Earth and space science conference, regularly hosting more than 20,000 researchers from more than 100 countries.

Last December, the AGU2025 exhibitors’ hall included nearly 300 booths—one of which initially surprised attendees.

“When people came to our booth and found out we are computer scientists, they were like, ‘Oh, and what are you doing here?’” said Jack Marquez, a research assistant professor in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). “We said, ‘We can help you.’”

Marquez is a member of the Global Computing Lab (GCLab), a research group run by Mathworks Professor Michela Taufer and focused on building findable, accessible, interpretable, and reusable (FAIR) data and data management systems.

For several years, GCLab has been developing a suite of open source tools to support FAIR geospatial analysis—which is why AGU2025 was the perfect opportunity for Marquez, Taufer, and Research Assistant Professor Kin Wai NG to showcase their work and generate interest for their newest project.

Last summer, GCLab was awarded a $240,000, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to unite these tools into an Open Source Ecosystem for Accelerating Research on Terrain & Hydrology (OS-EARTH).

“We want to advance Earth science research by fostering an open source ecosystem that supports efficient, scalable, and transparent geospatial analysis,” said Marquez, the lead investigator on the grant. “We went to AGU2025 to start showcasing the tools that are part of this ecosystem, get new users, and start building up the OS-EARTH community.”

Combining Tools, User Bases

Over the last several years—and with the support of nearly a dozen NSF grants—GCLab has developed and contributed to several tools that broaden and deepen the research capabilities of Earth and environmental scientists.

For example, the lab’s Soil Moisture Spatial Inference Engine (SOMOSPIE) can fill in gaps and increase the resolution of satellite images; GEOtiled makes it possible to quickly compute more than 15 terrain parameters (like elevation or average rainfall) over large geographical regions; and the National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) allows researchers at small institutions to remotely access and analyze large data sets.

“Every grant NSF has awarded us is an investment not just in our lab, but in the broader scientific community,” Taufer said. “What drives us is making sure that investment gives back—by delivering tools that make computing and AI accessible to every scientist who needs them, regardless of their technical background.”

Though GCLab’s tools are already cross-integrated, their user bases are currently separate. That’s what OS-EARTH aims to change.

Addressing Geospatial Pain Points

To make sure that OS-EARTH would address the field’s top priorities and bottlenecks, Marquez, NG, and Taufer conducted interviews with more than 100 geospatial researchers last fall.

“What surprised me the most is that many researchers already had access to advanced tools or infrastructure, but they weren’t using them because they were too hard to learn or didn’t fit into their workflows,” said NG. “At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how advanced a tool is if people can’t use it. So instead of thinking only about prioritizing new capabilities to our software, we started focusing more on reducing friction—making things easier to discover, easier to use, and more aligned with how people actually work.”

To test their smoother workflow and gather additional feedback, Marquez, NG, and Taufer will invite several geospatial research teams to an OS-EARTH hackathon this fall. This type of friendly competition encourages researchers to learn the tools and experience their benefits, fosters community, and—thanks to the open source nature of the tools—can also improve the ecosystem itself.

“Geospatial research will get easier and faster because people can just plug our tools into their workflow and improve their results with the same amount of effort,” Marquez said. “If they find that there is something that is not working properly, or they discover a new feature by using your tool, they can just push that knowledge back to your main repository and make OS-EARTH even better.”

While the GCLab members are excited to see OS-EARTH fulfill its potential to improve Earth and environmental research, Marquez emphasized that the lab’s capabilities can also help tremendously in other fields.

“If researchers are working in any area where they have problems with data—getting it, processing it, visualizing it, or publishing it—we can help with that,” he said. “That’s something I want everyone to know.”

Contact

Izzie Gall (egall4@utk.edu)