The Gulf’s New Horizon

“This an exciting partnership for the region whose support for early career researchers and capacity building will lead to future investments in synthesis science in the Gulf.”

Margo Schulze-Haugen, Deputy Director of NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, comments on our just-launched collaborative synthesis science project: the $3.5 million Gulf Ecosystem Initiative.

Past the Plate

“From pork to rice to seafood, a new analysis of nearly 99 percent of all food production on land and sea reveals the ecological footprint of what we eat”

NCEAS research, led by director Ben Halpern and explored in this article by Washington Post columnist Scott Dance, tackles the planetary consequences of dietary choice.

DEIJ Resource of the Month

Ten Rules for Belonging in Data Science Teams
Open Access Paper
This collaborative paper from NCEAS scientists and staff digs deep into ten concrete steps to cultivate inclusion for data science research teams.

SciComm Resource of the Month

Color Oracle
Color Blind Simulator
Not sure if your figure is accessible? This browser extension simulates color impaired vision on your screen. We also love the greyscale filter to see how things look in black and white!

Data Science Resource of the Month

Hello Quarto!
Keynote Talk by Julie Lowndes and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel
Miss the R studio conference this year? Us too! Rewatch this keynote about Quarto, which features charming illustrations from Allison Horst that make it easy to follow along.

Scientist Spotlight:
Camila Vargas, NCEAS Learning Hub
Data Science Trainer

“I’m looking forward to helping environmental professionals build skills on different data science topics and streamline their work. I’m thrilled to teach cutting-edge data science courses such as coreR, develop curriculum for the newest tools, and contribute to this awesome inclusive, and welcoming learning environment.”

Synthesis Spotlight:
Ecological Transitions, Increased Variability and Regime Shifts

Human impacts and climate change can alter an ecosystem, often permanently. Yet, we still struggle to predict when these shifts will cause lasting or transient change. This LTER synthesis group tackles this large forecasting problem, combining data from diverse sites with human-impacts and climate-altering experiments.

Opportunities at NCEAS

Job | Lead Geospatial Developer
Apply by December 2, 2022
SeaSketch, housed at NCEAS, is hiring an experienced geospatial analyst to work on marine spatial planning and visualization either remotely or in the Santa Barbara Office.

Course | Scalable and Computationally Reproducible Approaches to Arctic Research
Apply by December 5, 2022
This free course is open to Arctic researchers that have solid programming foundations and are ready for increased efficiency with big datasets or computationally-intensive projects.

Job | Assistant Teaching Professor in Environmental Data Science
Apply by January 16, 2023
Are you passionate about training the next generation of environmental data scientists? The MEDS program at UCSB and NCEAS are seeking a tenure track teaching faculty to join us!

Call for Proposals | Gulf Ecosystem Initiative
Apply by January 31, 2023
The NCEAS and NOAA Restore Gulf Ecosystem Initiative is funding 2-3 working groups at 75-125k to conduct synthesis science on important ecological issues in the Gulf of Mexico.

Job | NCEAS and NOAA Restore Postdocs
Apply by January 31, 2023
NCEAS and NOAA are hiring two postdocs to join our Gulf Ecosystem Initiative, with room for solo and group research around Gulf of Mexico fisheries, climate change, and management.

Course | coreR at NCEAS
Apply by March 3, 2022
This five day crash course at NCEAS with R as the main programming language covers best data science practices in reproducibility, data visualization, collaboration, and more.

Papers We’re Reading

Why don’t we share data and code? Perceived barriers and benefits to public archiving practices
Biological Sciences Practices
This paper, which includes former NCEAS postdoc Kaitlyn Gaynor, explores common barriers that prevent open data science and offers pathways to overcoming them.

Ecological and socioeconomic factors associated with the human burden of environmentally mediated pathogens: a global analysis
Lancet Public Health
This synthesis effort with NCEAS’ Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) quantified the highly uneven burden of environmentally-mediated infectious diseases.

Villager: A framework for designing and executing agent-based models in R
The Journal of Open Source Software
NCEAS postdoc Marcus Thomson and software developer Thomas Thelen collaborated on this new open source R package to better model human population dynamics.

Charting the value and limits of other effective conservation measures (OECMs) for marine conservation: A Delphi study
Marine Policy
Another SNAPP working group paper, this time investigating how ocean conservation policies may be useful in reaching 30% ocean and land protection by 2030 (“30 x 30”).