2026 July ESIP Meeting: Full Schedule

We are a home for Earth science data and computing professionals. Our sessions bring together the community for hands-on, interdisciplinary deep dives as we explore "Bridging Divides: Data, Technology, Community" this year. Learn more about this theme on the ESIP Meetings page.

Session and plenary recordings will be published on the ESIP YouTube Channel.

11:00am CDT

Modern Tools and Interoperable Workflows for Geospatial Discovery

Tuesday July 28, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

Building an open and collaborative geospatial community depends on creating opportunities to share emerging technologies, interoperable tools, and practical workflows. This session brings together participants of all experience levels to explore new approaches to analysis and data access while encouraging collaboration and idea sharing. Speakers and developers will showcase community-focused tools through approachable demonstrations designed to provide attendees with resources they can immediately apply in their own work. Pre-managed environments such as Google Colab will be used to share live coding examples, web tools, and other resources.

Presenters

Xiaohua Pan: “AI-Powered Coding: An Atmospheric Scientist’s Journey with ChatGSFC”

Ethan Shavers: "S3 Software for Scale-Specific Sinuosity Analysis"
Abstract: This presentation showcases three open-source tools developed by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) that advance geospatial analysis through artificial intelligence, geomorphic characterization, and high-resolution elevation data processing. First, we introduce a GeoAI application that employs transformer-based models to enhance lidar point cloud classification, improving feature differentiation and supporting more efficient downstream geospatial workflows. We also highlight a workflow for surface water feature extraction in Alaska that integrates radar derived elevation and reflectance data to improve the detection of hydrologic features in challenging environments. In addition, we present a new open-source implementation of the Scale Specific Sinuosity (S3) tool, designed to quantify stream bend geometry and its contribution to overall planform sinuosity. These tools demonstrate how open-source approaches can strengthen the reproducibility and scalability of geospatial analysis. The tools are developed for Linux systems, and the code can be accessed through the CEGIS GitLab repository: https://code.usgs.gov/ngtoc-cegis.

Audience
Geospatial scientists, educators, students, and data providers interested in learning about newer geospatial tools, workflows, and data formats; open to coding and learning new software

Speakers

Chris Battisto

Ethan Shavers

CEGIS Section Chief, USGS

Xiaohua Pan

Principal Atmospheric Scientist, Adnet System Inc.

Tuesday July 28, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Comal

AI & Intelligent Systems

2:00pm CDT

Failing Isn't Failure

Tuesday July 28, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

We hide our failings. Our resumes and CVs sing of our accomplishments, but not the twisted path we took to get there. In this session, three community leaders will proudly tell tales of their professional failings: the impact they had, what their response was, and with hindsight, what it might have been in a kinder universe. This session is offered in support of every researcher with imposter syndrome, every scientist who didn't get an experiment to work, and everyone who had a dream job turned nightmare. Significant audience participation is expected.

Audience
Early career researchers who want to learn how others have failed and pivoted; experienced professionals who want to know they aren't alone; everyone in between

Speakers

Jennifer Schopf

Science Liaison, Leadership Class Computing Facility, University of Texas at Austin / TACC

Dr. Jennifer M. Schopf, Science Liaison for the LCCF, has been a member of the TACC leadership team since 2022. In her previous role at Indiana University, she built the team that ensured international data sharing was fast and effective for a broad range of major facility partnerships... Read More →

Denise Hills

Project Manager, Advanced Resources International

Long tail data, data preservation, connecting physical samples to digital information, geoscience policy, science communication.

ORCID: 0000-0001-9581-4944

... Read More →

Tuesday July 28, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Comal

Community, Education, & Capacity Building

4:00pm CDT

The ESDIS Metadata and Data Quality Drive

Tuesday July 28, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

This session puts forward the case that high quality metadata leads to better tools and services, and that standardized data leads to less costly tools and services. The session tests two hypotheses: (1) improving metadata quality will improve the quality of tools and services; and (2) improving standardization of incoming data will reduce the cost of ingest, archive, and distribution. Improvements being tested include bringing UMM-C inventory in line with schema validation rules, turning on CMR schema validation, establishing CMR as single point of truth for ESDIS metadata, and iterative AI/ML-powered improvement of collection metadata. The session measures reduction of issues reported against Earthdata Search.

Audience

Data providers, data curators, research scientists

Agenda

Session Introduction - Doug Newman
How we came to this hypothesis - Nick Doty
The role of metadata stewardship - Shannon Leslie
Dirving metadata quality forward -Tyler Stevens
Building a single source of truth for publications and citations - Irina Gerasimov
Improving data consistency - Owen Littlejohns

Speakers

Doug Newman

Science Data Systems Lead, NASA/ESDIS

NASA ESDIS Systems Engineer.

Tuesday July 28, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Comal

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

8:30am CDT

Closing the ARCO Adoption Gap: Modernizing Data Analysis Workflows

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

Despite the growing availability of Analysis-Ready, Cloud-Optimized (ARCO) data, most of the Earth System Science community still relies on legacy download-and-analyze workflows. This session brings together data providers, software developers, and users to compare notes on what is actually moving the needle on adoption, with focus on interoperability across ARCO datasets from different providers. It also discusses the rapidly expanding role of LLM-assisted data discovery and analysis, including emerging tooling such as MCP servers. Through lightning talks, demonstrations, and guided discussion, the session will surface pain points and collaboratively draft a lightweight ARCO Adoption Notes document.

Speakers
1. What drives ARCO adoption? Lessons from NSF NCAR's GDEX, Speaker: Harsha Hampapura
2. Beautiful, Barrier-Free Visualization as an Incentive for ARCO Adoption, Speaker: Elizabeth Holmes
3. From Files to Analysis: Chunking, Virtualization, and ARCO-like Access Patterns in the Cloud, Speaker: Luis Lopez

Audience
Open data providers (NASA, NOAA, DOE, NSF NCAR, USGS, university data centers); tool and cyberinfrastructure developers; Earth science researchers and domain scientists including graduate students and early-career researchers

Speakers

Eli Holmes

NMFS Open Science lead, NOAA Fisheries

I have been involved in training in statistics and ocean data computing for most of my career. I am currently lead of NMFS Open Science and in this role, I facilitate and run trainings in computing, data access and statistics for NOAA Fisheries. I am co-lead of the Inter-agency... Read More →

Luis Lopez

Research Software Engineer, NSIDC

Luis Lopez is a Research Software Engineer at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. He is a passionate advocate of open science and has contributed to open source projects such as Apache Nutch, PyLDAVis, earthaccess and virtualizarr.

Thomas Cram

Software Engineer, NCAR

Harsha Hampapura

Scientist, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

Wednesday July 29, 2026 8:30am - 10:00am CDT
Comal

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

11:00am CDT

Harmonizing Innovation and Preservation: Integrating Cloud-Native Formats into Open Earth Science Ecosystems

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

The federal government is accelerating data preservation efforts and is beginning to receive cloud-native formats for long-term preservation. Archivists and data management practitioners now face the challenge of preserving formats that are community-managed but not yet adopted by widely recognized authoritative bodies such as LOC or NARA. This session explores the policy gap and the need for agile governance frameworks on new cloud-optimized formats. Agencies will share how they have successfully adopted and implemented new cloud formats as part of cloud migration, covering advantages and disadvantages, governance policy, data access considerations, and documentation requirements.

Audience
Data management professionals, policy makers, developers, GIS analysts

Speakers

Paul Lemieux

Data Archivist, NOAA / NESDIS / National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

Paul received his B.A. in Geography and M.S. in Information Science from the University of Tennessee in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He currently works as a Data Archivist for the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi... Read More →

Hailiang Zhang

Software engineer, NASA GSFC

Sarah O'Connor

Physical Scientist, NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Nazila Merati

Physical Scientist, DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Data whisperer, CCO and firm believer in data night.

Physical Scientist who leads and coordinates data management planning and data stewardship for long-term data preservation.

Sarah Menassian

IT Specialist - Data Scientist, DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI

Doug Schuster

Interim Director, Computational and Information Systems Lab, NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

David Blodgett

Civil Engineer, U.S. Geological Survey

Wednesday July 29, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Comal

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

2:00pm CDT

Help Us, Help Ourselves: Sharing Infrastructure Across Repository Networks

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

Open data repositories share a common core set of needs for computing and networking infrastructure. As repositories grow, there is an increasing trend to move 24x7 operational services from on-prem data centers to commercial cloud providers, often at significantly higher prices (redundant multi-site storage can be 10-30x higher than on-prem). In light of recent massive funding cuts, this Council of Data Facilities cluster session explores synergies and efficiencies gained when repository networks cooperatively provide mutual access to on-prem data center facilities. Case studies will focus on shared storage infrastructure, drawing on networks like OSDF and OSN. The session will develop a roadmap for a bottom-up community effort to help repositories help themselves.

Audience
Repository managers, technology developers, and open data facility users interested in sustainable, reliable, and accessible open data; academic and federal facilities

Speakers

Vishu Nandigam

San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego

Martin Seul

Lead of Software Engineering (Acting), CUAHSI

Nick Jarboe

Program Manager, Jarboe Enterprises

EarthRef.org, MagIC paleomagnetic data repository, and the FIESTA data repository software stack.

Jennifer Schopf

Science Liaison, Leadership Class Computing Facility, University of Texas at Austin / TACC

Jeanette Clark

Research Software Engineer, NCEAS

Matt Jones

Director of Informatics R&D, University of California Santa Barbara

DataONE | Arctic Data Center | Open Science | Provenance and Semantics | Cyberinfrastructure

Wednesday July 29, 2026 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
Comal

Cloud-Native & Data Infrastructure

4:00pm CDT

Bridging Data Silos: Scaling Digital Resource Cards and Iterative Governance for Soil Data

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

This session reviews and solicits feedback on digital resource cards that describe data holdings/repositories, APIs, semantic resources, and related organizations — specifically cards describing agents (organizations, labs, people), semantics (vocabularies, code lists, ontologies), data holdings and APIs, and publications. These cards capture what data are described by whom, who governs data and semantic resources, and how governance is communicated. Ongoing work from the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster, this session gathers feedback and incorporates it into future iterations. The session closes with a brief discussion on how the resources will be governed and maintained.

Audience
ESIP clusters or members of partner organizations who maintain semantic resources or knowledge bases of data holdings and repositories; participants interested in knowledge management and community co-production

Speakers

Cory Levinson

Software Consultant / Soils and Biogeochemistry MSc, UC Davis

Kathe Todd-Brown

Assistant professor, University of Florida

I'm a computational biogeochemist who uses simulations to look at how soil breaths and links up data to support those models. I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida and co-chair the Soil Ontology and Informatics Cluster as well as the Operational Ethics Cluster at... Read More →

Brandon Whitehead

Graduate student, University of Florida

Wednesday July 29, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
Comal

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

11:00am CDT

Cell-Based Spatiotemporal Data Standards: Where Conventions Support Each Other, Where They Diverge, and What We Should Work on Together

Thursday July 30, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

The NetCDF-CF based Unidata Common Data Model has become the de facto abstract data model for interchange of cell-based spatiotemporal data, but related conventions are being substantially renegotiated. Zarr v3 was released in early 2025 with sharding and a formal extension mechanism designed for community members to contribute Zarr extensions. The Zarr community prototyped a modular Zarr Conventions framework at the October 2025 Zarr Summit. In recent years, STAC became an OGC Community Standard and there is active work on aligning the datacube extension with the bands construct in the STAC core. OGC API-EDR is developing rapidly and aims to provide a set of use-focused query interfaces to data collections in this space. This session will bring together community members who work across these projects to discuss convergence, divergence, and coordination needs. The deliverable is a public seminar series proposal and specific actions.

Agenda:
- Ethan will give background and status of the Unidata Common Data Model and NetCDF
- Dave will describe current workrelated to Zarr, STAC, and OGC-API
- Max will present the status and plans for GeoZARR
- We will open the floor to discuss needed next steps to harmonize and coordinate the various efforts in the space.

Audience
Data managers, cloud native specialists, oceanographic/atmospheric/landscape modelers, software developers, data modelers working with Zarr, NetCDF, STAC, CF, or OGC standards

Speakers

Max Jones

Cloud Engineer, Development Seed

Ethan Davis

Software Engineer, NSF Unidata - UCAR

David Blodgett

Civil Engineer, U.S. Geological Survey

Thursday July 30, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Comal

Standards, Metadata, & Interoperability

2:15pm CDT

Unconference: ESIP Can't Chase Funding, We Can

Thursday July 30, 2026 2:15pm - 3:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

Open unconference session — topics and format to be determined collaboratively by attendees on the day. All five rooms are available. Participants self-organize into groups around topics of shared interest and report back to the broader group.

Audience
All meeting attendees

Thursday July 30, 2026 2:15pm - 3:30pm CDT
Comal

General

4:00pm CDT

ESIP's Contribution to Global Data Resilience

Thursday July 30, 2026 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT

Comal

Collaborative Notes

The disruptions to research data access that began in January 2025 exposed significant vulnerabilities in the global data ecosystem. Researchers, repository managers, and data stewards were forced to confront difficult questions: How resilient are the repositories that underpin scientific research? Which datasets are most critical to preserve during a crisis? How can the community prepare for future disruptions before they occur?

The response from the Earth science and research data communities was swift. Organizations around the world worked to identify at-risk datasets, support repository migration efforts, and develop new tools and frameworks to assess resilience. These efforts led to initiatives such as the Repository Crisis Scorecards, the Sloan Foundation-funded Building Resilient Repositories Project, AGU's Impactful Datasets Project, the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences Global Data Convening, and several emerging publications documenting lessons learned from repository disruptions and recovery efforts.

While these activities have generated valuable insights, significant questions remain unanswered. What have we learned from the events of 2025? Where are the greatest risks within our current repository ecosystem? Which resilience strategies should be prioritized by repositories, funders, institutions, and research communities? And what role should organizations such as ESIP play in advancing this work?
This interactive session will bring together participants from across the Earth science data community to reflect on lessons learned, identify remaining gaps, and collaboratively define priorities for future action. Short presentations will provide context from ongoing resilience initiatives, but the primary focus will be facilitated discussion and community input.

The session will conclude with a discussion of the future direction of ESIP's Sustainable Data Management Cluster, which is currently seeking new leadership. Participants will help identify opportunities for future collaboration and consider potential areas of focus, including repository resilience, data sustainability, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, and data governance.

The goal of this session is not only to share updates on recent projects, but to develop a community-informed roadmap for strengthening the resilience, sustainability, and long-term stewardship of Earth science data.

Audience
Anyone is welcome to participate

Speakers

Lesley Wyborn

Data Strategist, Australian Research Data Commons

Mark Parsons

Consultant, American Geophysical Union

Trying to build a more resilient and sustainable global data infrastructure.

Jens Klump

Group Leader Exploration, CSIRO

“The really exciting part is not about putting labels on things, but about what you can do when you put machine learning to work on the labelled data.” (https://www.auscope.org.au/posts/2020/12/18/introducing-jens).
President of the International Geo Sample Number Implementati... Read More →