The Earth Collaboratory

Integrating global and local perspectives on tropical deforestation

Profound changes in the global environment are occurring at a staggering rate, including tropical deforestation, shifts in climate & ecosystems, emerging diseases, etc. While impressive gains have been made in understanding the Earth’s environment as a “whole system”, through computer modeling techniques and new satellite-based observations, there is still a large “disconnect” between global, top-down views of changing planetary conditions, and the local, bottom-up perspective of how humans affect and live in a changing environment. Critical place-based information is often “washed-out” in global views, but global environmental problems are not merely the sum local conditions. True integration of both local and global perspectives is requisite to answering key science questions and ultimately to cultivating a more sustainable future.

The Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) is leading an effort to build an Earth Collaboratory to serve as an interface between global environmental scientists and local experts drawn from all over the world. We are attempting to integrate the globally-consistent “top-down” view with the thematically-rich “bottom-up” view provided by place-based science. The Earth Collaboratory builds on new collaborative Internet-based technologies (e.g., Google Earth, Wikipedia) to bridge global and place-based science and connect experts and citizens.

The prototype Earth Collaboratory focuses on tropical deforestation and subsequent land use practices. By querying local experts, we hope to achieve a level of “ground-truth” for global maps of tropical deforestation, revise the data set, and incorporate and share place-based data sets that will dramatically enrich the data content and provide a genuine exchange of ideas of how deforestation is manifest from both global and local perspectives. Regional networks of experts will provide a minimal level of editorial oversight. This prototype will serve as a test-bed for new project ideas, including establishing global-to-local collaborative networks for detecting emerging diseases, changing patterns of agricultural land use, shifts in climate and ecological patterns, and changes in biodiversity.

We invite your feedback and participation in this evolving effort. We anticipate that the prototype Earth Collaboratory will be functional soon. Please contact Holly Gibbs or Jon Foley for additional information or to become part of the Regional Network of Tropical Deforestation Experts.