Authors
Casey Jenson (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL), Alison K. Post (CIRES,Earth Lab), Virginia Iglesias (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL), R. Chelsea Nagy (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL, NC CASC), Cibele Amaral (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL), Nathan A. Quarderer (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL), William R. Travis (CIRES,Earth Lab, NC CASC), Jennifer K. Balch (CIRES,Earth Lab, ESIIL)
Abstract
Established in 2015 through the University of Colorado's Grand Challenge initiative, Earth Lab is celebrating ten years of advancing data-intensive, interdisciplinary environmental science. As a university-serving synthesis center, Earth Lab operates at the nexus of environmental science, data science, and artificial intelligence, with a mission to accelerate the understanding of global environmental change and support societal adaptation and resilience. Earth Lab is anchored by three integrated branches: the Analytics Hub, Education Team, and Science Team. The Analytics Hub develops advanced statistical, analytical, and visualization methods to support data- and compute-intensive research at CU Boulder. They support faculty and researchers by co-developing scalable computing workflows that integrate multimodal datasets and machine learning. For instance, they used remote sensing datasets to develop "Data Pyramids" and convolutional neural networks to assess forest management impacts on ecosystem services across the Western US. The Education Team runs a three-course Earth Data Analytics Professional Certificate through CU's Geography Department and maintains an open-access learning portal, now home to more than 300 training modules accessed by millions of users worldwide. The Science Team conducts use-inspired research on topics ranging from natural hazards and climate-driven disturbances to ecological transformation, landscape dynamics, and adaptation strategies. Over the past decade, Earth Lab's contributions have reached far beyond the university. Its research has informed the 2023 Economic Report of the President, shaped proposed EPA air quality standards, and supported real-time risk-reduction strategies for industry partners and emergency managers. Earth Lab scholars actively engage in public discourse, advising policymakers through roundtables with the U.S. Congress, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security, and also serve as trusted voices in local and national media. To date, Earth Lab has trained more than 80 undergraduate and graduate students and 18 postdoctoral researchers, published 193 scientific papers, and brought in over $36 million in external funding-investments that helped launch two major campus centers: the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) and the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab (ESIIL). As Earth Lab enters its second decade, we are expanding our reach, amplifying our impact, and renewing our commitment to collaboration across CU to drive bold, data-intensive science and tackle the most urgent environmental challenges of our time.