Galaxy for Earth System Sciences: An Open Platform for Analysis, Sharing, and Training

The Earth System is a complex and dynamic system that encompasses the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, land, and biosphere. Thus, Earth system science relies on heterogeneous data. It addresses key scientific questions such as land-atmosphere interactions but also studies the impacts of climate change. These studies require the integration of multiple datasets and methods, often across disciplinary boundaries. In practice, however, workflows are frequently implemented using locally installed tools, obsolete scripts and isolated computing environments, making analyses difficult to reproduce, share and reuse.

Galaxy addresses these needs by providing a Virtual Research Environment. It’s an open, comprehensive, and sustainable web platform for understanding and analyzing data. This platform was tailored to Earth science studies and it’s called Galaxy for Earth System Sciences (GESS https://earth-system.usegalaxy.eu/  or https://earth-system.usegalaxy.fr/ ).  Galaxy enables users to access data, tools and computing resources, allowing them to construct, execute and share analysis workflows without requiring programming skills. GESS extends the Galaxy framework by integrating tools, data formats and workflows commonly used in Earth system sciences, covering various scientific domains related to the study of climate, atmosphere, oceans, land surfaces and biosphere processes.

A main advantage of Galaxy lies in its workflow-based approach. Scientific analyses are processed as workflows that capture all steps, parameters and software versions, ensuring reproducibility and transparency. These workflows can be reused, adapted and shared enabling collaboration. GESS supports the execution of large datasets analysing workflows on distributed computing infrastructures removing all technical difficulties for the end user.

To facilitate the use and understanding of Galaxy, a structured collection of training materials has been developed to help users in adopting the platform and good practices in Earth system data analysis. These tutorials go from introductions to Galaxy concepts (data management, workflow construction, reproducibility) to domain-specific examples based on Earth science use cases. By combining hands-on tutorials with executable workflows, GESS provides a practical learning environment that supports both individual skill development and community-wide effort.

This presentation provides an overview of Galaxy for Earth System Sciences. We will present the platform, its representative tools and workflows, and the associated training ecosystem. Finally, we’ll show some lessons learned from deploying GESS, and perspectives for further development to support Earth system science.