News at the HPC²
MSU Geosystems Research Institute's Czarnecki Recognized For Outstanding Commentary On Challenges Of Open Geospatial Data In Agriculture
November 26, 2024
Joby Czarnecki
Joby Czarnecki, associate research professor with GRI, along with Mary Ann Jones, former associate professor in MSU Libraries, received the 2024 Outstanding Commentary Award from Agricultural and Environmental Letters, an academic journal focused on high-impact research and commentary on agricultural and environmental disciplines.
Czarnecki and Jones' paper, "The problem with open geospatial data for on-farm research," analyzes the current environment for open data in agricultural research from the perspective of both researchers and producers.
The paper argues that data sharing requirements will make on-farm research increasingly difficult because current research using farm geospatial data does not do enough to protect privacy, reducing the likelihood of participation. As more research funders expect data to comply with Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) principles, scientists are under pressure to release potentially identifiable data or use de-identified data with reduced reusability.
Czarnecki noted that geospatial data presents unique challenges because it can be referenced with land ownership records, which are easily obtained from local agencies.
"Medical research has done a great job in establishing methods for protecting the privacy of their participants," Czarnecki said. "However, they don't have the geospatial privacy hurdle to contend with. Once geography becomes part of the equation, the traceability of the data source becomes more challenging to obscure.
The paper outlines some possible solutions for open data issues moving forward, such as opening metadata but controlling access to the data itself, using controlled-access data enclaves, or releasing curated data subsets. However, these solutions also have issues that need to be addressed by the research community.
Czarnecki is currently leading a United States Department of Agriculture-funded project to support grower-led on-farm experimentation. Growers are uniquely positioned to understand their own farm data but may lack statistical sophistication in the design of the experiment. The lack of statistical rigor means outcomes may be the result of chance and not a true, repeatable result. This has the potential to lead to disappointment if the experiment is repeated across more acres where the consequences are higher financially.
"By empowering growers to collect, manage, and analyze their own data, we can provide an alternate pathway for privacy protection while still building our foundational knowledge of production agriculture. Growers are natural experimenters who have different perspectives on significance and risk than researchers; this makes us ideal partners as we can support efforts already on the ground in a system that already works for our stakeholders."
Click here to view Czarnecki and Jones' commentary in Agricultural and Environmental Letters.
