Agclimate telecon 2015-11-03

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Agenda (Joint with Energy & Climate Work Group)

Winter 2016 Meeting: preparation for our sessions

• First session proposal: Workshop to develop CRT (Climate Resilience Toolkit) Case Studies
• First session speakers
  • For agriculture Case Study: TBD
  • For energy Case Study: tentatively Paul Stackhouse or Jason Barnett (LaRC)
• Second session proposal: Frontiers in Agricultural and Energy Data Collection and Application
• Second session speakers
  • TBD
• Food/Energy/Water (FEW), Climate Corporation, ...

Minutes:

November 3rd, 2015 Telecon: Discussion Notes

Bill's notes from Nov'15 telecon

Bill's notes (link above) do a great job summarizing the discussion, linking to specific outside sources, and highlighting Action Items.

Overall, this telecon meeting was to discuss our 2 ESIP Winter Meeting Session Proposals and identifying possible collaborations (for ESIP winter meeting or in the future) with Food Energy Water (FEW) nexus and Climate Corporation.

First Session Proposal (Workshop of CRT Case Studies): Discussion
We were joined by Paul Stackhouse and Jason Barnett from NASA's Langley Research Center who are working across both the agriculture and energy sectors with GIS based web tools and services. There were many opportunities identified in which their research and tool/service development and application could become a good platform to workshop/discuss as a Case Studies for the Climate Resilience Toolkit.

• Identify the datasets and tools useful for Energy and Agriculture analysis/resilience planning
• Demonstrate the Capabilities of these tools/services
• Talk about specific Usage Examples

Case Studies:

• Providing data in Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) format for crop modeling use.
• Providing solar energy data to National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).
• Working with American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) related to building standards.
• Working with RETScreen of Natural Resources Canada.

Data used:
include GEOS-4 (older), MERRA-2 (newer), CERES, GEWEX SRB, ISCCP.

Group discussed what CRT Case Studies aim to do. CRT was started in part to help potential users of Climate Data Initiative (CDI)/data.gov with tools and examples (Case Studies) of how data can be used to solve problems. Brian summarized: CRT Case Studies are stories/recipes that address specific problems or needs.

• ACTION 1: Paul Stackhouse and Jason Barnett will decide on two topics for presentation (one on ag and one on energy) and send the presentation titles. Length of presentations and workshop style TBD.
• ACTION 2: Bill will contact Glenn Bethel, remote sensing coordinator of the USDA - might be a good contact for either of the two sessions.

Second Session Proposal (New Frontiers in Ag/Energy Data): Discussion

• Decided to keep the session title a bit more broad (not limited to only drones)
• Decided to keep the three overarching topics (Data collection, Data Management and Data Application) for now, and to potentially narrow it down depending on what speakers are able to attend the session. Agreement that all three areas would be good to explore in this "new frontier", but exactly how it will work with the session speakers in the time allotted is to be determined.
• Paul Stackhouse and Jason Barnett might be able to participate in a building energy analysis / sustainability / energy balance discussion, and are working on a study of NASA buildings for this purpose. However, as they will be participating heavily in the CRT Workshop session, we will try to find other speakers for this session.

• ACTION 3: Bill will contact a researcher at Cornell who is using drones for corn phenotyping
• ACTION 4: Bar will follow up with and contact Max Messinger - Drone use in agriculture and environmental sensing, Courtney Hammond-Wagner - web tools and cell-phone/mobile app tool for Agricultural Planning and Environmental Goals, and Jarlath O'neil-Dunne spatial analysis lab / drone operations use and remote sensing - to determine if they would present (and what they might be able to present) for this session.

Potential Future Collaborations

Food Energy Water (FEW) nexus

Discussion around contacting the NSF Program Officer for new “food, energy, water” (FEW) area (http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=135642&org=NSF&from=news) or National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE).

Brian identified that the FEW group, they are in town two weeks after our winter meeting after ESIP, and could potentially fit well or have some overlap with our Agriculture and Energy groups. We could look through the agenda and maybe look for local people who are speaking on food / energy / water issues local to DC that we could potentially invite.

Bill identified that it sounded like the FEW group would be at a different level then our current proposed CRT workshop, and that we would probably hold off and discuss the possibility of working on this as a session for the summer ESIP session. Conclusion: Postpone intial contact but keep FEW in mind for the future, revisit for the ESIP summer meeting 2016.

Climate Corporation:
Is there overlap? Could they come and participate? More to discuss, possibly for the Summer ESIP meeting or possible in connection with our New Frontiers in Ag/Energy Data session - with their mobile app. Will follow up.

Attendees:
Bill Teng
Lindsay Barbieri (Bar)
Brian Wee
Nancy Hoebelheinrich
Jason Barnett
Paul Stackhouse
3 (?) other call-in’s