Terrapop aims to enhance interdisciplinary research on human-environment interactions by facilitating the interoperability of diverse data formats from various scientific domains. The initiative focuses on data preservation, integration, and accessibility while collaborating with organizations that specialize in data curation and sustainability. By improving data management practices and providing location-based integration, Terrapop plans to support researchers with a comprehensive understanding of population dynamics and environmental variables.

2. TerraPop Goals
Lower barriers to conducting interdisciplinary human-
environment interactions research by making data with
different formats from different scientific domains easily
interoperable
Provide an organizational and technical framework to
preserve, integrate, disseminate, and analyze global-
scale spatiotemporal data describing population and the
environment.

3. TerraPop in Context
Collaborating Organizations
• Data integration expertise
• Large census and survey
data collections & expertise
• Institutional foundation
• Human-environment
interactions research
expertise
• Environmentally-oriented
data collections & expertise
• Data preservation and
sustainability expertise
• Social science data
collections & expertise
• Major producers and distributors of data on both humans and their environment
• Major producers of tools for integrating and transforming data across formats
• Leaders in preservation and sustainability

4. Background
 Sustainable Digital Data Access and
Preservation Network (DataNet)
 Provide reliable digital preservation, access, integration, and
analysis
 Anticipate and adapt to technological change and user needs
 Engage with frontiers of computer/information science and CI
 Serve as component elements of interoperable data
preservation and access network

5. established in 2009

6. established in 2011

7. TerraPop in Context
DataNet Cyberinfrastructure
Curated population and
environment data collection
 Exposed through DataONE,
SEAD
 Extracts exportable to DFC
Integration services
 Potentially available through
DFC, SEAD
 Open source components and
API

8. • T W O D O M AI N S : P O P U L AT I O N & E N V I R O N M E N T
• T H R E E D ATA S T R U C T U R E S
• Microdata
• Area-level data
• Rasters
Source Data

9. Making disparate data formats interoperable
Microdata:
Characteristics of individuals
and households
Area-level data:
Characteristics of places defined
by boundaries
Raster data:
Values tied to spatial
coordinates

10. Location-Based Integration
Microdata
Area-level dataRasters
Mix and match
variables originating in
any of the data structures
Obtain output in the
data structure most
useful to you

11. Location-Based Integration
Individuals and households
with their environmental
and social context
Microdata
Area-level dataRasters
Age Sex
36 M
34 F
11 M
8 M
42 M
39 F
15 F
Landcover
Forest
Forest
Forest
Forest
Grassland
Grassland
Grassland

12. Location-Based Integration
Summarized
environmental
and population
Microdata
Area-level dataRasters
characteristics for
administrative
districts
County ID
G01001
G01003
G01005
G01007
County ID Mean Ann.
Precip.
Median HH
Income
G01001 768 50,500
G01003 589 48,500
G01005 867 51,000
G01007 701 50,750

13. Location-Based Integration
Rasters of
population and
environment
data
Microdata
Area-level dataRasters

14. Why TerraPop?
 Data
 Access
 Preservation
 Documentation
 Creation
 Transformations

15. Improved Data Access

20. Preservation
 Data producers have no preservation plan
 GLI crops data
 Previous versions of data difficult or impossible
to find
 MODIS Land Cover Collection 4 superseded by Collection 5,
but Collection 4 is unavailable

21. Documentation
 Data lacks sufficient (or any) metadata
http://gli.environment.umn.edu/

22. Documentation
 GLI crops data originally provided through an
anonymous FTP site
 No metadata provided with the data files
 So, we wrote it!

23. http://www.earthstat.org/

24. http://www.earthstat.org/wp-content/uploads/METADATA_HarvestedAreaYield175Crops.pdf

25. Abaca – Harvested Area GeoTIFF Metadata
http://www.earthstat.org

27. Abaca – Harvested Area GeoTIFF Metadata
http://www.terrapop.org

28. Creation
 Historical subnational GIS data
 Matched to census data
 Aligned with most recent GIS data available for a given
country

34. Photographed Countries
Census Bureau Library, Library of Congress, Harvard

35. Creation
 Historical subnational GIS data
 Matched to census data
 Aligned with most recent GIS data available for a given
country
 Area-level data
 Tabulated from census microdata
 Obtained from census agencies as digital files, PDFs, or
HTML tables

36. Transformations
Continuous Binary Categorical
Min Percent area Mode
Max Total area Number of Classes
Mean
Count
Percent area*
Total area*
* Available for some continuous agricultural rasters

37. Area-Level Summary of Raster Data

40. Data in TerraPop

43. Completed GIS Boundary FilesGIS Boundary Files In Progress

44. Beta Raster data
 Global Landscapes Initiative (GLI)
 Yield and harvested area for 175 crops
 Global Land Cover 2000 (GLC2000)
 Land cover data, circa 2000, derived from the VEGETATION
instrument on the SPOT 4 satellite
 WorldClim
 Climate data describing temperature, precipitation, and
bioclimatic variables, created from weather station data
collected from approximately 1950-2000

45. New Raster Data
 MODIS Land Cover Type (MCD12Q1)
 Yearly land cover data derived from the MODIS Terra and
Aqua satellites, available for 2001 - 2012
 500 meter spatial resolution
 Available in five land cover classifications
 IGBP
 University of Maryland
 LAI/fPAR
 Net Primary Productivity
 Plant Functional Type
 Now available on our staging site

46. Project Status
 Currently in project year 4
 Prepping a rollout of new data, but you can
preview it at http://beta2.terrapop.org
 Prepping a new UI for summer 2015
 Always creating new data!