• Blog writing sign-up sheet - This is a document where you can sign up to write a blog for the Earth Lab website and see what others are writing about.
• Earth lab Website Drupal 8 user guide - This Drupal 8 guide explains how to create pages and make edits to the Earth Lab website.
• Analytics Hub Website Content: Analytics Hub Website and Strategy
• Analytics Hub Website To Dos: Analytics Hub - Website To Do
• Tutorial Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqZNB1ajALU
• Drupal Site Resources Guide: Earth Lab Drupal Site Resources - 6.1.22
  • Explains some specific circumstances & best practices

To join the EDS seminar mailing list (as an example) follow the instructions below:

• Send an email to "[email protected]". (Change name of mailing list in email address for different listserv.)
• You will receive an email response shortly after, please reply to this response email to confirm your addition to our mailing list (Do not click the blue ‘join this group’ button within the email).
• You will receive a confirmation email shortly after & no further action is needed. You have successfully been added to the mailing list.

Earth Lab has six focus areas: Extremes & Natural Hazards, Adaptation Science, Earth Data Across Scales, Teaching & Learning Earth Data Science, Cutting-Edge Earth Analytics, and Landscape Dynamics. These are the unifying themes that all Earth Lab research and projects fall within. These themes are meant to remain static---they will not change over time depending on grants or personnel moves.

Each Earth Lab focus area has projects nested within it. Each project is led by an Earth Lab scientist. In contrast to focus areas, these projects may change based on funding or personnel changes however ideally the project areas remain somewhat consistent so earth lab doesn’t build up dozens of project pages that become dated over time. Ideally however project pages generally describe project areas that you are working on. For example for the education team, the focus area that we are most focused on is teaching EDS. Some of our project themes include:

• Open education
• Diversity in STEM
• Evaluation of teaching and learning EDS

It is not likely that those project areas will change in the near or even distant future. This allows us to talk about these areas with confidence. When we have new funded projects such as the earth data science corps we then write blog posts about the work. This keeps the project area content new and up to date. A blog can be tagged allowing it to live in several places given a project may span multiple project areas and in some cases it could span focus areas as well. Example with the EDSC we have evaluation, it targets diversity and we also are using open education modules.

The flexibility of blog posts allow earth lab to “Cross publish” content across focus areas in an attempt to remove the siloed appearance of the previous website design.

Team members write blog posts about their work related to various projects. These are meant to provide updates on the work Earth Lab is doing.

Link to Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqZNB1ajALU (min ___)

Ideas for what content should be on a project page: Broader themes within a Focus Area (e.g. “Data Collection” for the Analytics Hub) Individual projects that last a year or longer or have a lot of attention/media coverage (e.g. Risky Development) Projects or teams that produce a lot of blog posts united by some central theme

Project pages have the following content capabilities: Header/Background Image/Subtitle Description Team Lead and Team Members Autopopulating blogs Pinned blogs (via the Featured Posts) Featured Content Cards, Featured Posts, Featured Section, Flexible Text Cards, and Text Funder

Pinned vs. Autopopulating Blog Content

• What The most recent blogs attached to the project (which is done on the blog creation page) will appear on the project page. This section appears under the About section, after the featured blogs (if added). Some projects will want a series of “featured” blogs as well as the most recent work. This can be done by adding the Featured Posts content type. This section will appear underneath the About section, before the other content (e.g. Recent Work, Team Members). Since they are added manually, these blogs are not required to be tagged with the project name, but it is recommended that you use the ones associated with the project.
• How CIRES IT sets up these sections, and they do so across the whole “Project” content type. Some individual pages (e.g. Newsletter) have similar sections that are added individually.

Overall, Earth Lab’s voice is accessible, informative, inclusive and friendly. Blog posts should be informal, fun and engaging wherever possible. When developing blogs, feel free to include humor.

Please follow the general rules below when creating or publishing content (exceptions may apply):

• Include 1-5 relevant tags (see the list of tags Earth Lab uses below)
• Title needs to be clear, engaging, concise and less than 55 characters
• Recommended post length is ~1500-2000 words. Minimum 300 words.
• Write short, concise paragraphs with 3-7 subheadings that guide the reader - imagine someone is scanning the article, do the headings help them scan the content? This is important for both the reader and SEO.
• Include images, if appropriate
• Only publish original content, unless re-publishing existing content using a customized canonical link
• Keep the voice clear, engaging and friendly
• Avoid passive voice and keep language active (use online tool Hemingway Editor for assistance)
• Use Associated Press (AP) style, oxford commas for days!
• Link to external sources, no need for works cited section—higher domain authority sites (.gov and .edu sites have this) and sites with https (instead of http) improve this
• Link to at least 2 internal pages
• Include an introduction that clearly states the objective of the article, a body and a conclusion
• Titles, headings and subheadings are title case and comply with AP style (for reference, use online tool Capitalize My Title)
• Spellcheck content prior to publishing
• In blog posts, it is recommended to include a Call to Action (CTA) in the first paragraph
• Write in short, clear sentences
• Use the conversational voice of a blog and not a research paper
• Define all jargon terms
• Consider breaking up text with bullet points and lists
• Connect your work to the big picture and why it matters
• Focus on telling a story even if it means not being able to include every detail of research
• Before writing, fill out a blog brief to target keywords, audience, objectives, headings & subheadings (that include keywords), and writing outline

• Planning
• Blog brief: Before you start writing, fill this out.
• Topics
  • SEMRush: Tells you trending topics that others are writing about.
  • Buzzsumo: Tells you what topics are trending around a particular keyword.
• Keywords:
  • List of free tools to identify keywords
• Writing:
  • Hemingway Editor: Tells you the grade level that you’re writing at. Also helpful for checking passive voice.
  • Read-O-Meter: Tells you read time for a blog.
  • Article on How to Write Irresistible Articles
  • Video on 7 Tips That Will Make Your Blog Successful
  • Article on How to Write a Blog Post for Beginners (And Even Experienced Bloggers)
• Editing:
  • Associated Press (AP) Stylebook
  • Purdue Online Writing Lab: Associated Press (AP) style guidance at
  • Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips *Images
  • Unsplash
  • Pixabay
  • Google Images: Search images labeled for reuse, or cite ones that aren’t
  • Tinypng for image compression
• Title
  • Capitalize My Title: Check your title for AP style
  • CoSchedule: Headline analyzer that provides a score for your title and how to improve it.

All content should meet one or more of Earth Lab’s blog goals below:

1. Establish Earth Lab’s domain authority and thought leadership in our areas of expertise (e.g. fire, machine learning, forests, etc.).
2. Teach core data-intensive skills that blend science with data science.
3. Advertise or raise awareness of professional certificate and forthcoming Master’s Degree in Earth Data Analytics and associated programs, including workshops.

When developing and managing online content, it is important to consider the user first and foremost (but in tandem with the program’s goals). Find more information on Earth Lab’s user personas here.

• Is your content original and unpublished elsewhere?
• Does your content relate to Earth Lab’s website goals?
• Does the content meet the needs of blog user personas?
• Is the point of the page clear? Can you summarize the content when skimming it?
• Have you removed unnecessary passive voice?
• Is the language conversational, clear, concise and active?
• Are your paragraphs short and concise?
• Do you have concise headings or subheadings every 1-2 paragraphs?
• Does your content comply with AP style guidelines (except do not use Oxford comma)?
• Do you link to two or more internal pages?
• Do you have reference links to support research, facts and statistics instead of a works cited section?
• Do you have a short and engaging title that is less than 75 characters (including spaces, delineator and brand name)?
• Does your page have one < h1 > tag that includes keywords?
• Do you have a meta description that is between 160 characters (including spaces) and has a strong call to action?
• Did you include relevant images?
• Are the image filenames and ALT texts optimized with keywords?

• Read this blog post on how to write a blog by former Earth Lab intern Ally Faller
• Watch this 3 minute video - 7 Tips That Will Make Your Blog Successful
• Read this blog post - How to Write a Blog Post for Beginners (And Even Experienced Bloggers)
• Skim these examples of good blogs -
  • Why Earth Data Scientists Are in Demand
  • What on Earth is Data Science
  • Why California’s Wildfires Are So Destructive in 5 Charts

Blogs should be geared towards a general audience, not Earth Lab. This means it should be:

• About something that’s interesting to a general reader, not just a summary of your research and what you’ve been up to. This could require doing some outside research.
• Connected to the big picture, why does it matter?
• Focused on telling a story, even if that means not getting across every detail of your research (e.g. no need for a detailed description of your field site like you’d include in a research paper)
• Written in an accessible style. Use this tool, The Hemingway Editor, to check what grade level your blog reads at and fix overly complicated sentences.
• General tips include:
  • Use the conversational voice of a blog and not a research paper
  • All jargon terms defined
  • Attention grabbing subheadings (3-7 of them)
  • Short, concise sentences
  • Short paragraphs (even a one sentence paragraph is ok for a blog)
  • Break up the text with bullet points and lists
  • Link to sources, no need for a works cited
  • Text broken up with Images - to find some that are legal to use, do an advanced search for “Labeled for reuse” on Google Images
  • Don’t know what to write about? Use this tool Buzzsumo that tells you what topics are trending around a particular keyword.

Tags convey specific content details. They are micro-data that can be used to further categorize content. Tags are not hierarchical.

Tags function like a book’s index.

Indexes are usually much longer and cover various mentions of a term across all content. A book’s index is usually longer than list of chapters and adjusting terms doesn’t affect the structure of the book.

• You can use tags liberally: they don’t need to be a summary of an entire post and may relate to one section in a post

• Use descriptive tags, consider longer phrases, and consider popular keywords

• Do not create a tag that applies to only one post; their purpose is to link related posts and this dilutes the internal linking structure and confuses users.

• Don’t use too many tags; they are meant to link across the site and guide the user

• Multiple tags may be used on each piece of content

• Themes

  • Career development
  • Open reproducible science
  • Collaborative science
  • Data science
  • Diversity and inclusion
  • Open education
  • Open source software
  • Convergence Research
  • Co-production

• Subjects/Topics/Disciplines

  • Fire Ecology
  • Resilience
  • Disturbance
  • Invasive plants
  • Carbon
  • Urban Ecology
  • Forest dynamics
  • Extreme events
  • Natural hazards
  • Climate change
  • Adaptation and risk

• Sponsors

  • NASA
  • USGS
  • NC CASC
  • SCE
  • Open Philanthropy Project (OPP, roof material/land use classification from Planet for the Nuclear War Scenarios effort)

• Data

  • Active Sensors
  • Passive Sensors
  • Remote Sensing
  • Inventory
  • Social Sensing
  • Consumer Data
  • Other?

• Languages

  • R
  • Python

• Things We Do

  • Scientific programming
  • Education & training
  • Professional certificate program
  • Data Skills
  • Machine Learning
  • Deep Learning
  • Computer Vision
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Statistics
  • Modeling
  • UAV
  • Analytics
  • Data Curation
  • Data Collection
  • Data Tools
  • Software
  • Cyberinfrastructure