In this episode of Scene from Above, Julia Wagemann speaks with Matthias Mohr, independent software developer and one of the key contributors to the STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog) and STAC API specifications.

STAC has become foundational to how Earth observation data is discovered and accessed across cloud platforms. But its origins lie in a fragmented landscape of portals, inconsistent metadata, and incompatible APIs.

Matthias shares how STAC emerged from practical needs within the community and how it evolved into a widely adopted standard for geospatial data discovery.

Together, Julia and Matthias unpack:

A thoughtful conversation for anyone working with large-scale Earth observation data, from analysts querying data, to engineers publishing catalogues, to decision-makers shaping data infrastructure.

Host: Julia Wagemann

Guest: Matthias Mohr

In this episode of Scene from Above, Julia Wagemann speaks with Aimee Barciauskas, Data Engineer at Development Seed, about what it actually takes to make Earth observation data usable at scale.

For the past seven years, Aimee has worked closely with NASA’s IMPACT team, supporting the agency’s transition to cloud-native workflows. From initiatives like the Multi-Mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform (MAAP) to community-driven tooling and documentation, her work sits at the intersection of data engineering, open science, and real-world impact.

Together, Julia and Aimee unpack:

What “cloud-friendly” really means (beyond storing data in the cloud)

The technical and cultural barriers teams still face

Why reproducibility is as much about habits as it is about tools

How frictionless workflows could shape the future of Earth science

A practical conversation for anyone working with large-scale geospatial data and thinking about how to move from experimentation to repeatable, shareable workflows.

Host: Julia Wagemann

Guest: Aimee Barciauskas (Development Seed)

In this episode, we speak with Swetha Kolluri, who works on AI and Digital Innovations at the World Bank. Previously serving as Head of Experimentation at UNDP in India, Swetha has dedicated her career to applying frontier technologies to social and environmental challenges. With her background spanning rural development, data science, and sustainability initiatives across India and the US, she brings unique perspectives on transformative solutions using AI and cloud computing.

In this conversation, Swetha shares insights from her work designing innovative development experiments, and her vision for how earth observation, citizen science and AI can address global challenges such as environmental degradation and climate change. She also shares some tips managing cloud costs for organisations who may have low resource bases.

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Sign-up for thriveGEO's Cloud-Native Geospatial 101 training and use the exclusive discount code CNGPODCAST - https://bit.ly/geospatial_cloud

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More about Swetha:

Projects that Swetha mentioned in the episode:

GeoAI for brick kilns in India. This digital innovation applied AI to detect 48,287 brick kilns from satellite data with an accuracy of 96%, empowering environmental regulators in India to expedite climate action. 

https://geo-ai.undp.org.in/

DiCRA (Data in Climate Resilient Agriculture) is an accredited digital public good (DPG) that has democratized satellite data for informing climate finance in agriculture. This innovation provided data and intelligence on climate resilience across 50 million hectares of agriculture land across 7 states in India.

https://github.com/undpindia/dicra

‘VAYU – OpenAir’ with open software, open algorithms and open data collected on air pollution produced through hyperlocal mapping of air pollution in two cities - Patna and Gurgaon. This dataset is used to map point sources of air pollution and enable cities take action on specific sources. 

https://github.com/undpindia/VAYU_OpenAir

More about thriveGEO - https://thrivegeo.com/

Welcome to Season 15, during which we will host a series of conversations around the question: 'Is the future of geospatial in the cloud?' With ever increasing amounts of satellite data and computational power available, moving geospatial workflows to the cloud opens the doors to powerful insights. But what does it take to really switch to doing things in a cloud-native way? Let's find out together.

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Sign-up for our Cloud-Native Geospatial 101 training and use the exclusive discount code CNGPODCAST - https://bit.ly/geospatial_cloud  

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More about Brianna:

Website - https://www.briannapagan.com/

More about the NASA TOPS initiative - https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/tops/ 

Watch this episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/HB9ycjEsg0M 

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Season 15 of Scene from Above is brought to you by thriveGEO. 

Welcome to Season 15, during which we will host a series of conversations around the question: 'Is the future of geospatial in the cloud?' With ever increasing amounts of satellite data and computational power available, moving geospatial workflows to the cloud opens the doors to powerful insights. But what does it take to really switch to doing things in a cloud-native way? Let's find out together.

---

Sign-up for our Cloud-Native Geospatial 101 training and use the exclusive discount code CNGPODCAST - https://bit.ly/geospatial_cloud  

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Github discussion about the definition of cloud-native geospatial data - https://github.com/cloudnativegeo/cloudnativegeo.org/issues/18 

More about Jed:

Website - https://jed.co/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedsundwall/ 

More about the Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) - https://cloudnativegeo.org/ 

Watch this episode on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-86IH4DouY 

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Season 15 of Scene from Above is brought to you by thriveGEO. 

In the first episode of Season 14, we talk to Dr. Vivian Ribeiro about the challenges and opportunities of the new European Union Deforestation free Regulation (EUDR) in the Earth Observation Sector. Dr. Vivian Ribeiro is a senior data scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute and currently leads the spatial intelligence team in the Trase - Intelligence for Sustainable Trade initiative. She is also the co-founder and technical coordinator of the Do Pasto ao Prato app, a collaborative initiative aimed at increasing transparency in the Brazilian meat industry. Vivian holds degrees in biology from the University of Goias and masters and Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Brasilia

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vivihrbr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-ribeiro-276357a8/

Shownotes:

Do Pasto ao Prato: https://www.dopastoaoprato.com.br/

Trase: www.trase.earth

Season 14 of Scene from Above is brought to you by Geoawesomeness. Be sure to check out the EO Hub article by Muthukumar featured on S14E1: https://bit.ly/EUDREarthObservation

News Correspondent: 

Rafaela Tiengo: https://twitter.com/RafaelaTiengo_

Subscribe to Rafaela’s Newsletter! https://rafaelatiengo.substack.com/

Hosts, co-host and organizers:

Dr. Flávia de Souza Mendes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fl%C3%A1via-de-souza-mendes-phd-1456362b/

Dr. Yhasmin Mendes de Moura https://www.linkedin.com/in/yhasmoura/

Dr. Michelle Picoli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelle-picoli-234709a2/

Editor and translation:

Dr. Flávia de Souza Mendes

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.

In the last episode of Season 13, we talk to Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo about SAR, LiDAR, passive multispectral data, mangroves, biomass estimation, carbon stocks, payment ecosystem services, science communication & much more.  Dr. Lola Fatoyinbo, is a NASA scientist!! She is Research Scientist in the Biospheric Sciences Lab at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center based in Maryland, USA, where she studies forest ecology and ecosystem structure with multi-source remote sensing. Dr. Fatoyinbo has a Doctorate in Environmental sciences from University of Virginia, with a focus on Forest Ecology and Remote Sensing of Mangrove Wetlands. She serves on the GEDI and ICESat-2 Mission Science Teams and is Principal investigator on NASA Earth Science research. 

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EarthToLola

Season 13 of Scene from Above is brought to you by Geoawesomeness and UP42. Be sure to check out the EO Hub article by Ishveena Singh featured on S13E6: https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/esa-biomass-maps-climate-change/ 

Stay tuned for a bonus episode this summer to round out Season 13 of Scene From Above recapping the season and prospecting what comes next. And as always, thanks for listening!

Shownotes:

• Dr. Fatoyinbo’s 2011 Presidential Early Career Award: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/releases/2012/12-064.html 

S13E6 News Links:

• A new web-based mapping application: Sentinel-2 Land Cover Explorer:
  • https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/imagery/global-land-cover-revealed/?adusf=twitter&aduc=esri_conserv&adut=341c8636-83a0-4da0-859d-54ffafe29c71 

News Correspondent: 

• Rafaela Tiengo: https://twitter.com/RafaelaTiengo_

Hosts:

• Dr. Gopika Suresh: https://twitter.com/Go__pika 

This episode features Sabrina Szeto, who is a geospatial consultant who empowers organizations to use geospatial data and technology. She is a Google Developer Expert for Earth Engine. Sabrina has a Masters in Forestry from Yale University and a BA in Anthropology from Princeton University. She also is the co-founder and former Director of Women+ in Geospatial and is currently based near Munich, Germany.

• Website: https://sabrinaszeto.com/our-work

Season 13 of Scene from Above is brought to you by Geoawesomeness and UP42. Be sure to check out the EO Hub article by Aleks Buczkowski: ‘https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/understanding-the-earth-observation-value-chain/’

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Show notes:

• Earth Engine User Meetup YouTube: https://youtube.com/@EarthEngineUserMeetup

• https://sabrinaszeto.com/talks-and-outreach/creating-community-tutorials-for-earth-engine

Women+ in Geospatial:

• Women+ in Geospatial Website: https://www.womeningeospatial.org/

Hosts:

Dr. Flavia de Souza Mendes https://twitter.com/flasmendes

Dr. Gopika Suresh https://twitter.com/Go__pika

Dr. Morgan Crowley https://twitter.com/morganahcrowley

News correspondent:

Rafaela Tiengo https://twitter.com/RafaelaTiengo_

Rafaela's newsletter: https://rafaelatiengo.substack.com/

Previewing our next guest on S13E6:

1. They are a remote sensing research scientist with NASA,

This episode features Dr. Lujia Feng, a Principal Research fellow at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She  is a geodesist who is trained as a geologist and geophysicist and now explores the atmosphere. In her research, Dr. Feng uses GNSS to study natural hazards related to tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes and climate. Listen in as Dr. Gopika Suresh talks to Dr. Lujia Feng about Southeast Asia, seismology, atmospheric water vapour from GNSS, challenges of being an immigrant and how diverse voices bring diverse perspectives to remote sensing. 

Dr. Lujia Feng: EOS page https://earthobservatory.sg/about-us/our-people/feng-lujia

Dr. Lujia Feng's Email: [email protected] 

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Show notes:

Research paper about Earthquake in Costa Rica: 

The paper before the earthquake: 

Feng, L., Newman, A. V., Protti, M., González, V., Jiang, Y., & Dixon, T. H. (2012). Active deformation near the Nicoya Peninsula, Northwestern Costa Rica, between 1996 and 2010: Interseismic megathrust coupling. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 117. https://doi.org/10.1029/2012JB009230

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012jb009230

A paper describing the story after the earthquake

Protti, M., González, V., Newman, A. V., Dixon, T. H., Schwartz, S. Y., Marshall, J. S., et al. (2014). Nicoya earthquake rupture anticipated by geodetic measurement of the locked plate interface. Nature Geoscience, 7(2), 117–121. https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2038

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2038

SuGAr Network: https://earthobservatory.sg/research/tectonics/geodesy-group/sumatran-tectonic-geodesy-sugar-

Exploring the Application of GPS for Climate Research

https://earthobservatory.sg/news/blog/exploring-the-application-of-gps-for-climate-research

Dr. Feng's role model: Prof. Kristine M. Larson (https://www.kristinelarson.net/)

What is GPS?

https://earthobservatory.sg/earth-science-education/earth-science-faqs/miscellaneous/what-is-gps

What are the uses of GPS?

https://earthobservatory.sg/earth-science-education/earth-science-faqs/miscellaneous/what-are-the-uses-of-gps

Earth Science FAQs - Geology and Tectonics

https://earthobservatory.sg/earth-science-education/earth-science-faqs/geology-and-tectonics

Hosts:

Dr. Flavia de Souza Mendes https://twitter.com/flasmendes

Dr. Gopika Suresh https://twitter.com/Go__pika

Dr. Morgan Crowley https://twitter.com/morganahcrowley

News correspondent:

Rafaela Tiengo https://twitter.com/RafaelaTiengo_

Rafaela's newsletter: https://rafaelatiengo.substack.com/

Season 13 of Scene from Above is brought to you by Geoawesomeness and UP42. Be sure to check out the EO Hub article by Aleks Buczkowski: ‘https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/understanding-the-earth-observation-value-chain/’

Our next speaker:

1. They are a self-employed Earth observation expert,

This episode features Dr. Tahisa Kuck, Science and Technology Analyst at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of the Brazilian Air Force and Professor Tatiana Pará, professor at the Federal Institute of Pará. 

Professor Tatiana has a master's degree in development and management of the Amazon. She works with university extension taking geoprocessing tools to remote communities, promoting inclusion of girls and women in the world of STEM. She founded the group MENINAS DA GEO  and is entrepreneurial with stewardship activities and collaborative mapping. She mentors the Youthmappers IFPA chapter and has several research activities regarding monitoring deforestation in the Amazon. Her focus is to insert new people into basic education that can use geotechnologies as a tool for decision making.

Dr. Tahisa has a PhD in Applied Geosciences from University of Brasilia, Master in Remote Sensing from the National Institute for Space Research - INPE. Bachelor of Architecture and Urbanism. Member of the research group RSATE (Remote Sensing Applied to Tropical Environments). She works with research in the area of microwave remote sensing (SAR) and machine learning for tropical forests. At Institute for Advanced Studies, she is part of the PITER-N project team, whose research focuses on the autonomy of night flights of drones based on computer vision.

Listen to hosts Dr. Flávia de Souza Mendes and Dr. Yhasmis Mendes talk to them about this and more in this episode. 

Season 13 of Scene from Above is brought to you by Geoawesomeness and UP42. Be sure to check out the EO Hub that we featured on the episode this week: https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/

Shownotes:

Dr. Tahisa Kuck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tatakuck

Dr. Tahisa Kuck on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahisakuck/

Tatiana Pará on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tatiparah/

Meninas da Geo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meninasdageo/

Paper "Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01026-5

Prefeitura de Ananindeua investe na capacitação de mulheres ribeirinhas: https://www.ananindeua.pa.gov.br/semcat/noticia/71/prefeitura-de-ananindeua-investe-na-capacitacao-de-mulheres-ribeirinhas

Meninas e mulheres da ciência fazem a diferença no IFPA e no Pará: https://ifpa.edu.br/ultimas-noticias/1436-meninas-e-mulheres-da-ciencia-fazem-a-diferenca-no-ifpa-e-no-para

Brazil’s Amazon Soy Moratorium reduced deforestation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00194-5

TerraBrasilis (PRODES/DETER): http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/en/home-page/

RSATE (Remote Sensing Applied to Tropical Environments) on twitter: https://twitter.com/rsategroup

Geoawesomeness EU hub: https://geoawesomeness.com/eo-hub/

Hosts:

Dr. Flávia de Souza Mendes: https://twitter.com/flasmendes

Dr. Yhasmin Mendes de Moura: https://twitter.com/yhasmoura

News correspondent:

Rafaela Tiengo https://twitter.com/RafaelaTiengo_

Rafaela's Newsletter https://rafaelatiengo.substack.com/

Edition: Dr. Flávia de Souza Mendes

Three facts for the next episode:

1. Our guest is a structural geologist