David Corliss is the AVP Technical Expert in Data Science at General Motors OnStar Insurance. He serves on the steering committee for the Conference on Statistical Practice and is the founder of Peace-Work.

It’s April, the flowers are blooming, and the birds are singing, so it must be time for Stats4Good’s annual list of Earth Day project ideas.

In January, I identified climate change impacts and remediation as a top priority in environmental advocacy on the 2023 Data for Good Challenge List. A great place to begin is looking at the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. These 17 goals were identified by the UN in 2015 as part of a long-term plan for future development, creating a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.”

Any of the sustainable development goals would be a good area for Data for Good (there is a Wikipedia page for each), but goal 13 focuses on taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. This recognition by the UN as a sustainable development goal was the primary reason for identifying climate change impacts and remediation as a top priority on the 2023 Data for Good Challenge List.

Satellite data is increasingly being used to assess the impact of climate change and recommend beneficial changes. NASA maintains a website with data resources on global climate change. Desertification and deforestation are just two of the many ways satellite data is being used.

Another excellent source of data for measuring climate change in your area is the annual Christmas Bird Count from the National Audubon Society. The data reported from this bird census is publicly available for researchers and especially valuable for longitudinal analysis of human impacts on the environment, including climate change. A good example is a US Environmental Protection Agency study on how the latitude of migratory birds’ winter ranges have been moving north.

As is so often the case in Data for Good, the data is already available and ready to be used for high-impact analysis, but there are not enough statisticians volunteering to explore the possibilities. Since it’s best to reach out to your local chapter of the Audubon Society for support and context for the data, these projects also provide an opportunity to participate in data collection and connect with a local community of activists who need statistical support.

Another environmental activity in which data is plentiful but more analytics are needed is benthic testing of macroinvertebrates in streambeds—the bugs found in the mud and silt at the bottom. Benthic testing looks at water quality by examining biodiversity in streambeds, with particular attention paid to the presence of genera indicative of clean water such as mayfly larva. It’s the streambed equivalent of looking to see if a given location has chipmunks, which are sensitive to pollution, or if there are animals like rats that thrive in dirty environments.

Benthic testing is conducted by many local environmental groups across the country. Teams of volunteers gather in small groups, each assigned to a particular location in a watershed. Volunteers scoop up benthic material and pass it to a screen. A trained expert accompanying each small group identifies and catalogs which genera are present, producing a water quality score at that location. The data collected can be used to examine changes in water quality over time, allowing an assessment of the impact of climate change on the local environment.

Scientific studies, such as that by the Columbia River Basin, leverage data from benthic testing to measure the impact of climate change and recommend remediation measures. More studies of this type are needed, and many organizations are happy to partner with statisticians and data scientists to develop a climate change impact assessment for their local environment.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, biomedical engineer and environmental activist Cynthia Prieto-Diaz declared, “We are all environmental scientists, because we all live in an environment.” Each of us can learn about the United Nations sustainable development goals and find out which are related to our own work, interests, and skill sets. Each goal has a global network of scientists, activists, and government organizations to drive needed positive change. Statisticians and data scientists are critically needed to support each one. With so many high-impact intersections between our skills and interests and the sustainable development goals, there is literally a world of opportunities for Data for Good.