Start Learning Earth Data Science: Earth Lab Education

About the Earth Lab Education Initiative

The Earth Analytics Education Initiative is part of Earth Lab at the CIRES Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Earth Lab capitalizes on the data deluge from space and other platforms to accelerate science, reduce environmental risk, and train a new generation of earth data scientists. The Earth Lab Earth Analytics Education Initiative provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional students as well as online learners around the globe with core in-demand technical skills at the intersection of earth and environmental science and data science. All work is guided by a commitment to open and reproducible science, open education and expanding the reach of earth data science education to students across varying academic, professional, socio-economic and geographic dimensions. 

Start Learning and Teaching Environmental and Earth Data Science Today

On this site, you will find a suite of open course textbooks, courses and tutorials that teach in-demand earth and environmental data science skills. These materials are accessed by tens of thousands of users each week and can be used in a classroom or to support self-paced learning. Lessons also include open teaching data subsets that can be downloaded to complete activities. Through these materials, you can learn important data science skills including scientific programming using Python and R, version control using git, collaboration using GitHub, command line skills, and more. You will also learn how to open and work with a suite of data types including spatial, remote sensing, social media, and time series data as well as other data formats. All skills taught in these lessons were identified by market research performed by Earth Lab to identify skills that the public and private sector employers are looking for.

If you are interested in further expanding your earth data science skills, check out the Earth Data Analytics - Foundations professional graduate certificate. This nine credit program, consisting of three consecutive University of Colorado, Boulder courses, can be completed entirely online or in person over a ten month period from August to June. 

Get Involved With Us

The Earth Lab Education Initiative runs programs that target undergraduate, graduate, and returning non-traditional students as well as faculty and instructors. The program includes formal courses, workshops, career development events with industry partners, paid undergraduate internships, an open online open education learning portal, and a professional certificate

  • Earth Data Analytics Professional Graduate Program: The professional program consists of a professional graduate certificate and forthcoming professional master’s focused on providing students with the fundamental programming, spatial, and open science skills for working with earth systems data for public and private employers.
  • Online Learning Portal: The earth data science learning portal hosts over 300 data-intensive lessons and several Earth Analytics courses and textbooks.
  • Workshops: Earth Lab hosts data intensive workshops and training. All materials are posted as open education resources on the learning portal.
  • Tools for Education: The Education Initiative creates and shares free, open source educational tools to benefit the earth data science community.

All Earth Lab Education Initiative activities are guided by a commitment to open education, pioneering how learners everywhere can access free online earth data science educational materials.