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Welcome to GLASSNET Network News! 

What is GLASSNET?

GLASSNET is an NSF-funded Accelnet project, tasked to create a ‘network of networks' to facilitate Systems Integration to Manage the World’s Land, Water, and Climate Systems in the Anthropocene. GLASSNET emerged from the Purdue University initiative dubbed Global to Local Analysis of System Sustainability (GLASS) project. GLASSNET has strong engagement from U.S.-based networks GLASS and GTAP, Natural Capital Project (NatCap), CUAHSI (Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science). Partner networks include Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI), GlobEcon, Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP), Global Land Programme (GLP), and the Land Use Change Knowledge Integration Network (LUCKINet). For more information about GLASSNET, please view our GLASSNET Background document. 
 
GLASSNET Week Marks Kickoff
GLASSNET officially took flight with the three-day meeting, “GLASSNET Week” that took place May 17, 19, and 21. Over 100 researchers and stakeholders from hydrology, ecology, economics, agriculture and infrastructure from networks around the globe came together to exchange ideas on how the group can create an international Global-to-Local-to-Global (GLG) network. After a brief introduction of GLASSNET, participants were asked to answer which element of the GLG chain of analysis they currently employ: 
Graph of Researchers responses to Global to Local to Global chain of analysis they currently employ.
Participants were asked which element of Global-to-Local-to-Global chain of analysis they currently employ. This is the distribution of survey responses.
“GLASSNET aims to improve the way transdisciplinary research is conducted, shared, and communicated. As part of that goal, we will lead targeted efforts to establish best practices when training early career researchers to become the next generation of international science leaders. We aim to generate knowledge, inform policy and improve the outcomes reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. During GLASSNET Week, our team was able to draw from the participants’ experiences to chart a path forward for the project.” Tom Hertel, GLASSNET Director, said.
 
In order to gauge the current state of the art in GLG analysis, researchers were asked to rate their opinion on the current state of integration across varying scales: 
 

1. Current levels of integration across disciplines is sufficient to address these challenges:
Integration across scales is currently sufficient to address SDGs

2. Integration across scales is currently sufficient to address SDGs:
Integration across scales

3. A global-to-local-to-global framework is necessary to come to grips with the trade-offs that arise between SDGs:
Global to Local to Global Framework Graph
Throughout the week, researchers had meaningful discussions in breakout rooms focused on the working group topics identified by the GLASSNET Science Committee in April.  The teams refined the concepts of their respective working groups and identified the key topics for upcoming workshops. Each working group will host an interactive-based event as part of the GLASSNET Summer Workshop Series. These workshops will help develop the narrative for the GLASSNET Visioning paper that will be released at the biannual meeting in October.
 
Data Integration Workshop Recap
GLASSNET's first workshop, Data Integration and Interoperability, took place on June 17, 2021. The session included presentations from GLASSNET Network researchers and a roundtable discussion. The workshop focused on the ideas that surfaced in the data integration working group during GLASSNET week; specifically the issues of interoperability and the exchange of data at the boundaries of the current GLASSNET networks. 

Please check out the upcoming workshops in the series and register below. 
 
 
Upcoming Events
 
What is the GLASSNET Identity?

If you joined us for GLASSNET Week, you may have heard Matt Huber’s presentation “What is the GLASSNET Identity?”

As part of the NSF Accelnet meeting in January, the leadership team was asked to define what success would look for the GLASSNET Network. Throughout the process of dialogue and discussion the team realized in order to visualize how the GLASSNET goals would be achieved, first we needed to step back and think of who would be achieving those goals. While there are several deliverables planned for GLASSNET,  in order to gain a better perspective on those goals, the team decided they first needed to define the GLASSNET Identity. 

What is the GLASSNET Identity? 

The GLASSNET Identity is a baseline of key traits and characteristics that GLASSNET Researchers exhibit or aspire to claim as their own through professional development, mentoring relationships and training. This process equips GLASSNET Researchers with the skills needed to participate and lead transdisciplinary teams across varying scales.  

A GLASSNET researcher is typically an early career researcher, graduate student, or postdoctoral researcher who can adapt and implement cross-theme methods in order to uncover solutions to the problems where traditional techniques have failed. Over time, it is the GLASSNET goal for these researchers to feel comfortable claiming certain core identity traits as their own: 
  • Eager to be a part of transdisciplinary teams and has the knowledge to do so successfully. 
  • Ability to transition between data and models seamlessly through scales and disciplines. 
  • Expand two-way thinking across scales with a transdisciplinary approach.
  • Integrate all resources and expertise across the spectrum of stakeholders into the solution from the onset of the problem rather than as an afterthought. 
This is not an exhaustive list of the traits; rather the starting point that GLASSNET will use to shape the next generation of researchers capable of breaking away from traditional and narrow views in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. 
 
Featured Publications

Energy matters: Mitigating the impacts of future land expansion will require managing energy and extractive footprints


Justin A. Johnson, Christina M. Kennedy, James R. Oakleaf, Sharon Baruch-Mordo, Stephen Polasky, Joseph Kiesecker 


Understanding potential future patterns of human-induced land-use and land-cover change is critical to assessing and proactively managing the tradeoffs between development and the environment. Most global land-use change assessments, however, consider a narrow set of economic sectors, focusing primarily on agricultural and urban sectors. We present a global land-use change model that includes detailed energy and mining sectors (11 in total) in addition to agriculture and urban sectors. 

Heat stress on agricultural workers exacerbates crop impacts of climate change


Cicero Z. Lima, Jonathan R. Buzan, Frances C. Moore, Uris Lantz C. Baldos, Matthew Huber, and Thomas W. Hertel


The direct impacts of climate change on crop yields and human health are individually well-studied, but the interaction between the two have received little attention. Here we analyze the consequences of global warming for agricultural workers and the crops they cultivate using a global economic model (GTAP) with explicit treatment of the physiological impacts of heat stress on humans' ability to work.

The Economic Case for Nature


Giovanni Ruta, Justin Andrew Johnson, Uris Baldos, Raffaello Cervigni, Shun Chonabayashi, Erwin Corong, Olga Gavryliuk, James Gerber, Thomas Hertel, Christopher Nootenboom, and Stephen Polasky.


The direct impacts of climate change on crop yields and human health are individually well-studied, but the interaction between the two have received little attention. Here we analyze the consequences of global warming for agricultural workers and the crops they cultivate using a global economic model (GTAP) with explicit treatment of the physiological impacts of heat stress on humans' ability to work.