April CDI News: April Monthly Meeting, Powell Center Seminar, Carpentries Trainings, and Collaboration Area Activities

• April 2026 Monthly Meeting
• Powell Center Seminar
• CDI Carpentries Trainings
• Collaboration Area Activity

Wednesday, April 8, 2026, 11 am - 12:30 pm Eastern.

You are invited to the Community for Data Integration (CDI) monthly call, where we share information and tools to help you work with your data. These calls are open to both internal USGS and external CDI members.

April 2026 Topics:

CDI Project: An application for automation and streamlining of workflow for modeling of time-series data - Kyle Puls, USGS

CDI Project: Snakemake Training: Building Data Pipelines in Python - Andy McAliley, USGS

CDI Project: An application for automation and streamlining of workflow for modeling of time-series data

The USGS regularly estimates water-quality conditions in U.S. waters by developing statistical relations between continuous in-stream sensor readings and results from laboratory analysis of discrete water-quality samples. Despite widespread use of this approach, the procedures used to develop, quality assure, and publish these relations vary by author. The project addressed the need for a workflow interface to bring users through the entirety of the model development process in a repeatable fashion, from initial dataset upload to the generation of a summary document containing the characterization of model performance and containing diagnostic graphs and plots.

This project publicly released an R Shiny application with a reactive GUI framework to import and analyze datasets. Users can view descriptive graphs and plots characterizing the base dataset, compare and select prospective regression models, and generate archival summary documents containing tables and graphs describing model performance. While originally developed for use in water quality, this framework is extensible to time-series data in general where surrogate modeling of a constituent of interest is desirable.

Kyle Puls is a hydrologist at the Central Plains Water Science Center.

CDI Project: Snakemake Training: Building Data Pipelines in Python

A common task for researchers and developers is to process and analyze data programmatically. However, there is little guidance on how to write data workflows that are easy to read, share, execute, and scale up. Snakemake is a workflow management system which provides a framework to build standardized data workflows. Therefore, this project developed a training on using Snakemake to build data workflows

The Snakemake training course helps researchers and developers achieve these objectives:

• Determine whether pipelining would benefit a given project
• Run a Snakemake pipeline to create desired outputs
• Construct a static Snakemake pipeline
• Find resources and help for writing Snakemake pipelines
• Meet other Snakemake users to work with and support to develop pipelines

Feedback from an educational designer and from participants in a pilot course improved the accessibility and effectiveness of the course materials.

The training can be taken as a self-guided course at any time. Upcoming instructor-led courses will be advertised through CDI. Additional courses may be arranged upon request, depending on available funding. Contact wmcaliley@usgs.gov or jkwang@usgs.gov to inquire about instructor-led trainings. 

Andy McAliley is a machine learning specialist in the Data Science Branch of the USGS Water Mission Area.

Powell Center Seminar: Beyond waves and shifting sand   

Join the USGS Powell Center seminar on Monday, April 13 from 3-4 pm ET.

Beyond waves and shifting sand: considering ecosystem processes in forecasts of coastal landscape change 

Lead investigators of this Powell Center working group recognized that coastal ecosystem processes were rarely incorporated into the barrier island models they frequently worked with. They formed a working group with expertise in geology, oceanography, ecology of specific coastal ecosystems, geography, and social sciences to tackle this problem. The group explored the key role of humans in driving coastal landscape change, the importance of inherent mechanisms that allow coastal ecosystems to maintain form and function following storms and sea-level rise, and the processes that occur as ecosystems transition in form. Finally, the webinar will also touch on a complementary study of the working group's dynamics as an interdisciplinary team.

Speakers: Sara Zeigler (USGS), Megan Jones (Oregon State University and USGS), Erika Lentz (USGS), and Ian Reeves (USGS)

Download calendar event to add to your calendar
or

The USGS CDI Carpentries instructors and facilitators are excited to share our training schedule for the remainder of the fiscal year. These interactive workshops aim to empower novice programmers to build strong foundations in the fundamentals of Python, R, and Git, focusing on best practices for scientific computing and data analysis.

Upcoming 2026 Trainings

• May - Introduction to R -  sign-up form (sign-ups close April 17th)
  • Introduction session - Monday, May 4, from 1-2pm ET
  • Workshop sessions - Thursdays in May (5/7, 5/14, 5/21, 5/28) from 1-5pm ET
• July - Introduction to Python -  sign-up form
  • Introduction session – Wednesday, June 24, from 1 to 2:30 pm ET
  • Workshop sessions - Wednesdays in July (7/1, 7/8, 7/15, 7/22) from 1-5pm ET
• August - Introduction to Geospatial Data with R - sign-up form
  • Introduction session – Thursday, July 30, from 1-2pm ET  
  • Workshop sessions – Thursdays in August (8/6, 8/13, 8/20, 8/27) from 1 - 5 ET

Spots will be limited to provide the best experience for the learners. Priority will be given to participants that work for the USGS. Participants will be selected across disciplines, mission areas, and regions, considering their reason(s) for wanting to participate in the training. There is no cost to attend these trainings, but selected participants will be asked to commit to attend each training session and get supervisory approval in DOI Talent. 

If you are interested in learning more about these trainings, please visit the CDI Carpentries SharePoint page*. 

Upcoming CDI Collaboration Area Meetings

See below for selected upcoming Collaboration Area activity.
To be best informed about a group's activities, join the contact list for specific groups here. 

Department of the Interior employees can see these calendar events and their join links by using the "Add from Directory" option and searching for "gs_cdi@usgs.gov" in Outlook.

April 6: 2 pm ET, Metadata Reviewers
Open Discussion

April 9: 3 pm ET, Software Community of Practice
Tutorial: IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) with Git Integration

April 9: 3 pm ET, Federal GeoAI Community of Practice
USGS CDI - ESIP collaboration
Federal GeoAI Monthly Meeting

April 13: 2 pm ET, Data Management
Data Cataloginator, Leslie Hsu and Grace Donovan, USGS

April 14: 1 pm ET, Software Community of Practice
Software Office Hours

April 15: 2 pm ET, Team Science
Navigating conflict with facilitative listening skills: Practical techniques, Emily Read and Amanda Cravens, USGS

April 16: 1 pm ET, Risk Community of Practice
USGS Tribal Relations – USGS Tribal Relations Toolkit Launch, Annie Scott, USGS and Building a geospatial framework for salt marsh management: from water samples to Landsat 9, Neil Ganju, USGS

April 21: 4 pm ET, Fire Science
Fire Science Monthly Meeting

April 27: 2 pm ET, Inland Bathymetry
Inland Bathymetry coordination meeting

April 28: 1 pm ET, Geomorphology
Toward an efficient framework for remote sensing of river bathymetry: Comparing sensors and algorithms on an inaccessible proglacial river in Alaska, Carl Legleiter (USGS) and Christy Stegman (NPS)

From your CDI Facilitators

Leslie Hsu (lhsu@usgs.gov), Emily Chapin (echapin@usgs.gov), Grace Donovan (gdonovan@usgs.gov), and Leah Colasuonno (lcolasuonno@usgs.gov)

Having trouble viewing this? View it as a webpage

--
Community for Data Integration Webpage
Community for Data Integration SharePoint site*

* If you need SharePoint access, you can request it here.