The USFS Project Director is Laurie Porth | US Forest Service Research and Development (usda.gov)
CDSDS Director, Bryan Heidorn coordinates employees for the University of Arizona.
Through our project, “Supporting publication of US Forest Service Experimental Forest and Other Research Data,” we work with the Forest Service Research Data Archive (Archive) to identify a subset of 4 to 6 of the Forest Service’s over 80 experimental areas (primarily experimental forests and ranges) to process historical and modern data.
The objective of this project is to implement protocols and standards for publishing and preserving research data collected using US Forest Service Research & Development funding.
Background
There is an expanded interest in and expectation for researchers to preserve and share the digital scientific data they create. Therefore, US Forest Service-funded scientists submit their data sets and documentation to the Archive for publication and preservation purposes. The Archive’s documentation review process helps to ensure that these published data are not only available but also usable by other scientists and the public for decades to come.
The US Forest Service Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) have been collecting research data for over 100 years. A substantial amount of this data collection resides on paper, and represents studies completed over 30 years ago. "The EFR community believes there is substantial value in these historical data, and that it would therefore be a value-creating activity to publish these data through the Archive."
In addition to the data, each EFR has a collection of paper-based records that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) would like to take possession of for long-term stewardship. However, the content of the records is often still in use. Creating a digital version of the record material will enable USFS R&D to meet both sets of needs.
Our Project
Arizona is home to five FS experimental areas. While the overall project can work on any of these, our project has focused on the Fort Valley Experimental Forest (FVEF); https://research.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/forestsandranges/locations/fvef). FVEF is the Forest Service’s oldest EFR; it was established in 1908. The project has been working on documenting this historical record – scanning paper records at archival-level quality, organizing those records, and converting the records into manipulable datasets with sufficient documentation to make the datasets usable to potential users (e.g., scientists, land managers and historians).
For training purposes, we have students or interns also assist USFS staff in publishing non-EFR data sets submitted by scientists for public release. This includes creating and reviewing metadata, processing GIS layers, creating database query interfaces, and other related tasks as determined by USFS staff.
We work with the US Forest Service to determine the best approach to archiving the data sets. Given the age of some of the data sets, new procedures were developed. For example, FS staff were familiar with sheet-fed scanners, but had not previously worked with overhead scanners for large-format and fragile materials. UA staff created a “finding aid” that tracks progress towards the goal of scanning all the paper files and provides fundamental metadata about each scan file. Formal metadata is created to document each data set, along with other descriptive material as appropriate for the particular data set. As appropriate, we also engage in the administrative deposit activities associated with an OAIS-compliant data repository. "Data publications are created following formats developed by the US Forest Service and published via the Archive."
To date, despite COVID restrictions and periodic inability to access FVEF due to severe winter weather conditions, the project has scanned 37,453 pages of research content. Of this, 2,943 pages from 8 research studies have been transcribed into Microsoft Excel to create manipulable datasets. Transcription is intrinsically slower than scanning under the best conditions. UA staff doing transcription have been additionally hindered by many of the pages being original field data collection sheets – with notes that made sense to the people doing the data collection, but we must decipher what they wrote and decode what that means to create a useful entry in Excel.
The UA students involved in the project have all had good things to say about their participation. At least one of the students adapted their experience on the project into a poster presentation at a professional conference.
U.S. Forest Service Staff
Current
Laurie Porth (project manager)
Keith Moser (Fort Valley EF principal scientist)
Past
AJ Beck
Savanna Bunn
Dave Rugg (project manager)
University of Arizona Students
Current
Crystal Brannen
Past
Mitchell Bennett-Tyler
Anna Fitzgerald
Daelyn Rhoden
Mario Villa