Research Applications of Geospatial Data from the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
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About the talk
Many of the world’s greatest sustainability challenges require spatial data as part of the search for solutions. The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) is one of 12 NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). Unlike most DAACs, which distribute data from NASA’s remote sensing instruments, SEDAC develops and disseminates spatial and tabular data on the distribution of population, settlements, infrastructure, human wellbeing, and variables related to environmental sustainability. In this presentation I will describe my own research applications of SEDAC to answer a number of questions. Examples include use of spatial data on child malnutrition in Africa to understand its environmental covariates; spatial data for indicator development; mapping population and settlements in relation to climate hazards; understanding patterns of poverty in relation to protected areas; integration of SEDAC and remote sensing data for climate vulnerability mapping; use of population data and indirect estimation techniques to calculate the number of migrants by ecosystem globally from 1970-2000; and use of population data layers in a gravity model to project the number of climate migrants to 2050. The goal is to expose participants to the range of SEDAC data and their potential for use in scientific research on climate and sustainability topics.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences.
About the speaker
Alex de Sherbinin is the associate director for science applications at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an environmental data and analysis center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination. He serves as deputy manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), coordinator of the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN), chair of the International Science Council World Data System scientific committee, and lecturer in the Earth Institute’s Sustainability Science master’s degree program. Prior to CIESIN he served as a program officer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and a population geographer at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). He received his PhD from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente (Netherlands), his MA in geography from Syracuse University, and his BA in geography from Dartmouth College. More details at www.columbia.edu/~amd155.
Suggested reading
- de Sherbinin, A., A. Apotsos, and J. Chevrier. 2017. Mapping the Future: Policy Applications of Climate Vulnerability Mapping in West Africa. The Geographical Journal. 183(4): 414-425. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12226
- de Sherbinin, A., M. Levy, S.B. Adamo, K. MacManus, G. Yetman, V. Mara, L. Razafindrazay, B. Goodrich, T. Srebotnjak, C. Aichele, and L. Pistolesi. 2012. Migration and Risk: Net Migration in Marginal Ecosystems and Hazardous Areas. Environmental Research Letters. 7 045602. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/045602.