Climate Center Tools

In collaboration with others, the Data Basin Climate Center is building custom climate-change relevant tools.  We are interested in building new tools, as well as collaborating with others to link existing analysis tools to Data Basin.  Currently we are developing or discussing with partners tools such as:

Time-series Animations

Visualizing scientific spatial data through time is critical to promoting a solid understanding of observed trends and simulation results related to climate change, fire, or land use change.  We propose to build animation tools that can detect time-sensitive datasets and allow viewers to see change over time.  Ultimately, users will be able to build their own custom animations or slideshows by creating sequences of datasets or maps they may have created.

Climate Uncertaintly Tool 

Data Basin is partnering with the California Academy of Sciences and Oregon State University to develop a climate uncertainty tool.  This tool will help users evaluate areas of high versus low uncertainty in gridded climate data (i.e. interpolated meterological data, complex topography, proximity to large bodies of water). 

Carbon footprint index

Such index for past or future developments can be created using existing spatial datasets.  It will describe potential natural vegetation and its carbon sequestration potential, density of road network, density of human population, density of livestock, and other such data to estimate average greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic activities.

Ecosystem service index

This tool will provide spatially explicit estimates of  carbon sequestration, forage production, fire risk, flood potential, groundwater recharge capacity, and other valuable services.

Point-and-click dynamic simulation tools

Given a range of future land use, management, and/or future climate scenarios, we propose to develop a software environment that will allow results from a series of climate change impact projections to be summarized across time for a user-defined area (district, soil type, ownership, watershed, etc.) to address such questions as : (1) What areas are most likely to be affected by vegetation shifts? (2) What areas might become carbon sources/sinks? (3) What regions are most vulnerable to future fires? and (4) Where would a particular species likely migrate? Such tool could display past changes based on observations and show future projections given a set of user-defined scenarios.

Contact Us if you are interested in collaboration