ICOS Science Conference 2020: Day 3, Plenary

1. PRESENTING ICOS DATA IN EDUCATION
Karolina Pantazatou, Harry Lankreijer, Lars Eklundh, Jutta Holst & André Bjärby
ICOS Carbon Portal, Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science,
Lund University

2. Overview
 Introduction to project
 Swedish Science Centres
 Developed educational material
 Topics
 Examples of educational material
 Outreach
 Project outcome
 Future developments
 ICOS in other areas of education
 Links to educational material &
documentation

3. About the project
Aim
 Promoting programming learning in high schools
 Use of real data (long time series)
 Focus on topics related to climate change and the UN Global Goals
Partners
 Swedish Science Centres
 ICOS Carbon Portal
 Lund University
• dept. of Physical Geography and Ecosystem
Science
• dept. of Computer Science
 Swedish National Space Agency
Funding
 Swedish National Agency for
Education
 Swedish National Space Agency
 ELLIIT - strategic research
environment funded by the
Swedish government

4.  SSC are an organisation dedicated on stimulating children's,
student's and the general public's interest in mathematics,
science & technology.
 The role of a Science Center:
 host interactive exhibitions
for school students and the general public
 organize scientific events in order to bring actual
developments in research closer to the public
 organize courses/seminars to train teachers
 Connection with international networks of Science Centres
• Nordic countries: NSCF – Nordisk Science Centre
Förbund
• Europe: Ecsite – the European network of science
centres
• America: ASTC – Association of Science Technology
Centres
• Asia: ASPAC – Asia Pacific Network of Science &
Technology Centres
Swedish Science Centres (SSC)

5. Format
 basic programming exercises in Python (repl.it)
 advanced programming exercises in Python using Jupyter Notebooks
(ICOS Jupyter instance or Google Colab)
 Combined learning material about programming and natural sciences
 Supporting documentation for teachers (GitHub)
Data
 observational data from ICOS stations
 observational data from other networks (e.g. NOAA)
 meteorological data (Swedish Meteorological Hydrological Institute - SMHI)
 satellite data from ESA & NASA satellites
 National emissions per industry sector from
Swedish statistics (Statistika centralbyrån - SCB)
Developed material

6. We have developed notebooks that cover the following topics:
 Keeling curve (Maona Lua)
 Carbon Cycle (ICOS data)
 Drought (ICOS data & satellite data from ESA)
 Global Warming (SMHI)
 Deforestation (satellite data from NASA)
The educational notebooks are available through:
 ICOS Carbon Portal GitHub (English version)
https://github.com/ICOS-Carbon-Portal/jupyter/tree/master/education
 Lund University GitHub (Swedish version)
https://github.com/lunduniversity/schoolprog-satellite
Test the notebooks using ICOS open jupyter service or Google Colab:
 https://exploredata.icos-cp.eu (username: any, password: msa)
 https://lunduniversity.github.io/schoolprog-satellite/
(Running notebooks in Colab requires a Google account!)
Topics

7. Carbon cycle – Explanatory text & figures
Examples of developed material (1/7)
Interactive
table of contents
Explanatory
text
Explanatory
figure

8. Examples of developed material (2/7)
Carbon cycle – video

9. Examples of developed material (3/7)
Carbon cycle – Photos of ICOS station & interactive maps

10. Examples of developed material (4/7)
Carbon cycle – Interactive plots
Full time series
Zoom in to 1 day
Tool-menu Box-zoom
Hover
code-cell
output
markdown
cell

11. Examples of developed material (5/7)
Carbon cycle – Python code & widgets for checking answers
Code
syntax
Example
Exercis
es
Write your
own code
Output
Output
Check your
answers

12. Examples of developed material (6/7)
Carbon cycle – Consolidation exercises with real-world use case scenarios
Questions
Use case
scenario
Steps
Write your
own code
Output
Check
your answers

13. Examples of developed material (7/7)
Carbon cycle – Educational quizes
Feedback
provided for
every option
Score
Did you
manage to
save the
penguins?

14. Outreach of material so far …
Outreach of material through SC:
 Students (age group --- > 15-18):
 Teachers (seminars/workshops):
 Pedagogs (employees at SSCs):
 University students (employees at SSCs): *(refers only to student-employees at Vattenhallen
SC in Lund)
Use of material in schools:
 open access through the project website & GitHub
 free online platforms (repl.it, Colab)
Participation in virtual events:
 ”Klimatfestivalen” (11-15/05/2020),
organised by the Bolin Centre for Climate Research in Stockholm
 ”Digital idag” upcoming event (01/10/2020),
organized by government institutions and presenting:
Prospects, benefits and challenges of digitalization in modern societies
Promotion of educational material to all 20 SSC:
 Virtual workshop for pedagogs from all SSC (25/08/2020)
possibility to use the material in virtual visits to a SC (covid-19)
96
4
59
36
38

15. General achievements
 Make more people aware of the effects of climate change using a more tangible “hands-on”
approach
 Providing proof why programming is necessary for monitoring ecosystems
 Promotion of the ICOS initiative and its role in mitigating the effects of climate change
 Highlighting the importance of maintaining and expanding the ICOS station network
 Get more people to use ICOS data (students = the scientists of tomorrow)
Advantages of using Jupyter Notebooks
 support interactive elements and can be used to create user-friendly applications/tools
for making learning fun.
 can be used as interactive presentation material (e.g. SC exhibitions, classroom, etc.)
 provide support for applied algorithms/methods to be well-documented in markdown cells
 teach students to work in an organized/structured way (FAIR-principles)
 support for the code to be shared between different people/users
 support for the code to be reused for different datasets
Project outcome

16.  SSC project continues
with the addition of new exercises
 New project: MINT
collaboration between ICOS Sweden,
Lund University (INES) and SC Lund.
• Focus on using examples from actual
research to develop learning material
for science subjects in school:
Physics, Mathematics, Biology,
Chemistry
• Examples: use flux data to explain:
 photosynthesis/respiration
 physics of radiation
 energy balance
Future developments

17. Similar material in Jupyter Notebooks with use of ICOS developed:
 Introductory notebooks to Python programming
• Introduction to basic Python programming
• Introduction to scientific programming with Python
 Drought 2018 analysis notebook for bachelor/master level courses
 PhD course on “From CO2 in situ measurements to carbon balance maps”
organized by:
• Dept. of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University
• ClimBEco graduate research school at Lund University
• ICOS Carbon Portal
ICOS in other areas of Education

18. • Try out ICOS educational material - online service
https://exploredata.icos-cp.eu (username: any, password: msa)
• Access to ICOS educational material (in English)
https://github.com/ICOS-Carbon-Portal/jupyter/tree/master/education
• Access to SSC education project material (in Swedish)
https://lunduniversity.github.io/schoolprog-satellite/ (website for the public)
https://github.com/lunduniversity/schoolprog-satellite (extended bank of exercises)
• Free powerful online IDEs, editors, compilers & interpreters
https://repl.it/ (for pure python code)
https://colab.research.google.com/notebooks/intro.ipynb# (for python code in jupyter notebooks)
Education project – collected links
• National & international SC
networks
Sweden: https://fssc.se/
Nordic countries: http://www.nordicscience.net/
Europe: https://www.ecsite.eu/
North America: https://www.astc.org/
Asia: https://www.aspacnet.org/ns
• Funding organisations
Swedish National Space Agency: https://www.rymdstyrelsen.se/en/
Swedish National Agency for Education:
https://www.skolverket.se/andra-sprak-other-languages/english-
engelska
ELLIIT, strategic research environment funded by the Swedish
government:
https://old.liu.se/elliit?l=en

19. Thank you!

20. https://data.icos-cp.eu/portal
https://exploredata.icos-cp.eu
https://www.icos-cp.eu/data-products
https://stilt.icos-cp.eu/viewer/
https://stilt.icos-cp.eu/worker/
https://github.com/ICOS-Carbon-Portal
https://data.icos-cp.eu/stats/
Account required:
https://cpauth.icos-cp.eu/login/
https://jupyter2.icos-cp.eu
https://meta.icos-cp.eu/uploadgui/
https://doi.icos-cp.eu/
https://meta.icos-cp.eu/sparqlclient/
https://fileshare.icos-cp.eu
Some selected links to the ICOS data portal
Main search interface
Anonymous Jupyter notebooks
Main ICOS obs. data products
View footprints and concentrations
Calculate your own footprints
ICOS CP source code repo
Download statistics
Login/create account
Jupyter service (sep. account needed)
User friendly data upload
DOI minting and metadata edit service
GUI for open SparQL endpoint
ICOS fileshare, online document editing
(any name+
password=msa)

21.  Jupyter is a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) incorporating a collection of tools for interactive
computing and sharing of computational ideas.
 A Jupyter VRE (e.g. Jupyter Lab) can host one or multiple user accounts. In every user account, it
is possible to:
• create directories
• create code files and write code (plain .py files or .ipynb files --- > Jupyter Notebook)
• upload data (e.g. csv, txt, netcdf, hdf, tiff, GeoTIFF, png, jpeg, etc.)
• link to external servers with data or download data from external sources through the web
 Jupyter can support a wide range of programming languages (e.g. Python, Julia, R, Matlab, C++,
C, etc.)
What is Jupyter ?

22. Documentation
 Text (HTML, LaTex, etc.)
 Images
 Video
 Links (external & internal)
Python Code
Output
Markdown Cell
Code Cell
Menu Bar
Tool Bar
Jupyter Notebook - Structure