Forest Service Research & Development (FS R&D) has long recognized the usefulness and importance of archiving and sharing the research data it generates. This recognition has been expressed in Research Station Quality Assurance (QA) Plans, the national QA Implementation Plan, and the Forest Service Manual. The FS Research Data Archive provides an infrastructure and the resources to implement sharing and preserving our research data.

There are both short-term and long-term reasons for archiving research data. Short-term in relation to what needs to be done to have the Archive and its constituent data sets be useful today; long-term in relation to preserving that usefulness decades and centuries into the future. The idea of thinking decades and centuries into the future is important for an organization that focuses on forests.

The Archive has already benefited from insights offered by Station researchers. We hope that if you have ideas for improving the Archive you will share them with us. We want the Archive to be as useful as possible to you and the research communities of which you are a part. We are also interested in having the Archive be friendly to the non-research community. Please contact the Archive team if you have any comments or suggestions.