About
Visit the Earth Information Center Exhibits
The Earth Information Center currently has three physical exhibits located at: NASA HQ (Washington, DC), Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (Washington, DC), and Kennedy Space Center (Merritt Island, Florida). All exhibits are open to the public.
- Exhibit
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
The Earth Information Center exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History includes a video wall displaying Earth science data visualizations and videos, an interpretive panel showing Earth’s connected systems, information on our changing world, and an overview of how NASA and the Smithsonian study our home planet.
- Exhibit
NASA HQ
The Earth Information Center at HQ is a physical and virtual experience at NASA Headquarters, where visitors can see how our planet is changing in areas that affect lives and livelihoods– from temperatures in our cities to sea level rise, greenhouse gas emissions to agricultural productivity.
Contact Information
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Why is the global understanding of Earth and its interconnected systems important?
Earth is more than a planet. Earth is home. As humans we are part of a broader, interconnected system and we share our home with over 8.5 million species. However, our home planet is changing on a global scale at unprecedented rates; global temperatures are increasing, precipitation patterns are changing and the frequency of extreme weather events is on the rise. Space-based observations of Earth can provide a holistic view of Earth's resources, including Earth's atmosphere, oceans and wildfires, while ground-collected observations from surveys and campaigns can give us details on local environmental conditions. For more than 50 years, Federal agencies have harnessed the capability of Earth data to inform decision making on the ground. Using satellites, sensors and surveys to see the previously unseen, the Earth information today informs management decisions that influence our daily lives through agriculture, air quality, biodiversity, disasters, energy, GHGs, sea level rise, water resources and wildfires. Understanding the connections among these systems across the globe and feedback between the decisions we make as humans on the rest of the planet can help to mitigate the impacts we face as our planet changes.
U.S. Government Resources on Earth's Changes and Impacts:
- EPA: https://www.epa.gov/data/environmental-dataset-gateway
- FEMA: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/risk-management/climate-resilience
- NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/
- NOAA: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/
- USDA: https://www.usda.gov/oce/energy-and-environment
- USGS: https://www.usgs.gov/science/science-explorer/climate
Earth Information Center Purpose
The Earth Information Center (EIC) aims to provide a holistic view of how the planet is changing in ways that affect the lives and livelihoods of individuals across the globe. More than just displaying data, the EIC demonstrates the intersection between local environmental conditions and global change. Awe-inspiring visualizations, interactive media and narratives show how Earth data benefits society and provides visitors an opportunity to explore Earth observations for their own decision-making. The EIC is enabled by contributions across EPA, FEMA, NASA, NOAA, USDA and USGS.
Who's Behind the Earth Information Center?
The Earth Information Center is coordinated by NASA in partnership with EPA, FEMA, NOAA, USDA and USGS. These agencies are collaborating to prototype development of the center with the goal of providing actionable, easy-to-use data and information about Earth's systems to the public. This includes collaboratively developing a curated collection of datasets, workflows, data stories and visualizations from across the federal government that help satisfy this mission.
The Center acts as a facilitator of and venue for this collaboration. Physical EIC exhibits showcase the federal government's data assets on Earth and demonstrate how these assets are being used to make critical decisions in the US and across the world. Earth.gov allows the public to use these data assets to inform their own decisions that affect their families, businesses and communities.
What Datasets are in the Earth Information Center? Why these?
The Earth Information Center contains trusted information on Earth systems. The observations, models and surveys ingested that revolve around nine Earth system themes: biodiversity, GHGs, agriculture, disasters, air quality, sea level rise, forest fires, energy and water resources. The datasets highlighted have the following characteristics:
- They are actionable, presented in a way that can directly help with decision-making.
- They are global or national in extent and coverage.
- They are updated regularly and there is a commitment from the agency that supports them to data continuity.
- They benefit from being explored alongside data from other agencies.
Earth.gov is a curated list of datasets devised collaboratively amongst the founding partners, and is not a comprehensive accounting of all relevant Earth products and datasets produced by the U.S. federal government. Additional features and data sets will be added as additional information is available, with links throughout the site to additional resources.
What Can you do in the Earth Information Center with existing data?
- Discover - Users can search the data catalog or learn more about the nine Earth themes from the data stories and visualizations.
- Explore - Browse the various data products, instruments, models and surveys and explore the snapshot of near-real time “Earth Now” data.
- Use and Analyze - Can access and use data in the cloud environment, examine trends in planetary change, derive analytics for areas of interest and share the results after establishing an account.
- Helpdesk - Submit feedback or request help understanding the Earth Information Center contents.
What's coming Next?
Additions to the Earth Information Center will occur in the coming months, including some new features and capabilities that will improve data discovery, exploration and analysis:
- Improvements to Center design and function of the interface and tools.
- More and different kinds of data.
- GIS or STAC data download for when you want to take the data into another application.
- Training, teaching and webinar events.
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