Advancing Data Science Proficiency in the Earth and Environmental Sciences: How an Earth Data Science Program is Helping Researchers Rethink Their Approach to Data Analytics

Earth and Environmental Data Science (EDS) is a rapidly growing field that combines the earth and environmental sciences with statistics and computational methods to analyze large, complex datasets. Despite the availability of vast amounts of environmental data, there is a significant gap in the available skillsets of domain researchers and scientists, limiting their effective use of these data. Earth Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) addresses this need through initiatives that include the Earth Data Analytics (EDA) Foundations Professional Certificate program, which emphasizes tools that contribute to open science such as Python, GitHub, and Jupyter Notebooks. Managed in collaboration with the Department of Geography at CU, this continuing education program provides essential training in spatial data analytics and open science workflows through project-based learning. This study uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the impact of the EDA certificate program on students' data analytics skills, providing insights into this EDS education model, which emphasizes open science and reproducible workflows, and enhances participants' capabilities to tackle environmental challenges.