Photo: Jeffrey Hamilton By Marcy Beck, Gretchen Gehrke, and Aaron Lemelin EDGI welcomed the opportunity to comment on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Proposed Rule: Migratory Bird Permits; Regulations Governing Take of Migratory Birds (Docket No. FWS-HQ-MB-2018-0090) in March 2020. This rule would narrow the scope of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) … Read more
Computer generated COVID-19 Coronavirus particle By Christopher Sellers, Leif Fredrickson, Alissa Cordner, Kelsey Breseman, Eric Nost, Kelly Wilkins, and EDGI Executive Summary The administration of President Donald Trump has repeatedly undermined science-based policy as well as research that protects public health. That undermining has eroded our government’s capacity to respond to the coronavirus — from … Read more
In January 2020, the Trump administration proposed dramatic regulatory changes that, if instituted, will undermine one of the nation’s most effective environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Act, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is a cornerstone of the laws and regulations put into place in the 1970s to protect the environment … Read more
By: Kelsey Breseman, EDGI The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) formed as an emergency effort to ensure public climate data stayed available in 2016, when it designed and organized 48 “Data Rescue” events together with the University of Pennsylvania where volunteers and activists saved 200 Terabytes of government data (EDGI 2018). These events prompted … Read more
EDGI’s comment supports this Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) effort to make data from federally funded research more available and accessible, with comments that focus on the importance of version-control, data accessibility, and facilitation of data utilization.
By Chris Sellers, Kelsey Breseman, Leif Fredrickson, EDGI Abstract: Throughout the history of U.S. environmental legislation, science has rightly served as our main touchstone for truths about threats to environmental and human health, but the Trump Administration has been slowly eroding its ability to do so. In this report, the first of a three-part survey … Read more
By Kelsey Breseman, EDGI EDGI initially formed as a reaction to a presidential election, but has matured to fill an ongoing need for public accountability for data. The organization’s first work brought together volunteers from across the United States and internationally to ensure the archive of thousands of pages and databases of publicly held information … Read more
By Kelsey Breseman EDGI is proud to announce that we are now officially a partner of the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). The partnership was announced at the ESIP Winter Meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, where data managers, data scientists, and other data-related professionals gathered to discuss better futures for data in the earth sciences space. … Read more
INSTRUCTIONS: To see the annotations, click on the text that is highlighted in yellow below; the relevant annotations will then appear on the right side of the screen. BACKGROUND: Just over fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon signed the landmark National Environmental Policy Act into law, requiring consideration of environmental impacts in all federally run … Read more
By Kelsey Breseman Heather: What is it we go into decentralization wanting, and what is it capable of doing? Kelsey: When we talk about decentralization in terms of social structures, it is almost entirely about increasing individual trust. But when we talk about it in a technical context, it is almost entirely about removing the … Read more