Semester Project Report Guidelines

The following report structure is provided as a guide.

Problem Introduction

Problem Statement

Write a short problem statement that defines the problem, who or what is being affected, and what is needed to address the problem.

Background

Provide the background needed to understand the problem statement.

  • Explain the issues in more detail
  • Explain how it contributes to specific harms for people or organisms.
    • Who is affected and how?
  • Provide context for the problem

Research Question

  • Formulate one or more research questions to be addressed.
  • Explain why they are important for the problem you described

Data and Methods

  • Provide an introductory sentence on how you address the research questions using data.

Datasets

  • Make sure to download the data and save any additional information.
  • Describe the datasets you used in your projects and how you downloaded the data.
    • Provide background info about the entire dataset even if you downloaded parts.
  • Use any exact identifiers, tools or APIs
    • Include links to data or download scripts where appropriate.

Data processing

  • Outline your data processing approach.
  • Describe what you did with the data regarding
    • Data selection, data quality
    • Computations What was done and why?
  • Don’t include all the code here (you can include some if you want to), but provide links to the processing scripts.

    • Example:

      We eliminated data during periods with fireworks, wildfires, or other abnormal conditions (<link to script>).

Results

  • Present your main results
    • You do not need to include every figure that you generated.
    • Describe what is presented in the figures. What do they show?

Discussion

  • Comment on the underlying data

    • Did you have issues finding/ accessing the correct data
    • Evaluate the data according to FAIR

  • How did your analysis address the problem?

  • What answers did you find?

  • Discuss any difficulties you encountered while working with the data.

    • Did you find the data you were looking for? Is it complete
    • Did you run into any issues with data processing?
    • Can you generalize what this means for working with environmental datasets and for solving environmental problems

  • If you had unlimited time, what additional analyses would you have conducted?

Summary & Conclusion

  • Briefly summarize your main results and what you found.
  • State your main conclusions about
    • your findings related to the problem
    • working with environmental data in general
  • Provide an outlook about potential next steps or the problem in general

Literature Cited

  • Include a list of cited literature
  • You may use any citation style, as long as you apply it consistently.
  • You should:

    • Provide an in-text citation where you reference any outside material.

    • Add the full citation to the Literature Cited section at the end of the document.

      Example:

      Using Author Date: (Order the list alphabetically by first author’s last name)

      Feedbacks between land and atmosphere are difficult to observe, but crucial for understanding changes in the climate system (Gerken et al. 2019) and affected surface temperatures in the U.S. Northern Great Plains (Bromley et al. 2019)

      References Cited:

      Bromley, G.T., Gerken, T., Prein, A.F., Stoy, P.C., 2019. Recent trends in the near-surface climatology of the northern North American Great Plains. J. Climate 33, 461–475. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0106.1

      Gerken, T., Ruddell, B.L., Yu, R., Stoy, P.C., Drewry, D.T., 2019. Robust observations of land-to-atmosphere feedbacks using the information flows of FLUXNET. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 2, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-019-0094-4

      Using Numbered Style: (Order the list by appearance in text)

      Feedbacks between land and atmosphere are difficult to observe, but crucial for understanding changes in the climate system [1] and affected surface temperatures in the U.S. Northern Great Plains [2].

      References Cited:

      [1] Gerken, T., Ruddell, B.L., Yu, R., Stoy, P.C., Drewry, D.T., 2019. Robust observations of land-to-atmosphere feedbacks using the information flows of FLUXNET. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 2, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-019-0094-4

      [2] Bromley, G.T., Gerken, T., Prein, A.F., Stoy, P.C., 2019. Recent trends in the near-surface climatology of the northern North American Great Plains. J. Climate 33, 461–475. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0106.1