Data monitoring
Tracking changes across the data infrastructure to identify and respond to changes.
DATA PRESERVATION
Protecting our public environmental data systems
PEDP is committed to the preservation of critical climate and environmental data. To date, we have archived more than 350 datasets that are used to research, understand, and advocate for our planet and its people.
FOCUS ON ACCESS
Accessible archives
Improving access to our data archives so that people can more easily discover and use them.
Data Legislation
Proposing policies that protect, defend, and preserve our digital infrastructure.
Community data
Connecting people to information about their environments and to each other.
UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS AT RISK
PEDP’s focuses on both triage and preservation, archiving what was at risk, and rebuilding what was taken down. Our members are building ways to find and use archived data and charting a path forward for improved environmental data infrastructure that makes it easier for data to be used for good governance.
Data and information: In early 2025, thousands of federal web pages and datasets were removed from websites in an attempt to comply with a flurry of executive orders. This deletion of data has weakened the federal infrastructure for collecting, stewarding, and disseminating public data.
People: Data not explicitly targeted are still at risk when the staff who maintain them are fired, reassigned, or prevented from doing field work. Agency priorities have shifted to meet administration goals, meaning gutted programs and staff will likely remain even as funding flows to new initiatives. Changes to federal grant-making will further reduce resources available for environment and climate work.
Access: This administration has targeted data that help people understand how our environment impacts our lives. The administration has also targeted data products and reports that help people make sense of the data and understand how it changes over time..
METADATA MATTERS
“Preserving datasets and making them available for public use is essential. Metadata makes findability not only possible but probable. PEDP members hope the datasets and metadata serve the community of people who use data and archivists.”
DEVELOPING OUR METADATA STANDARDS
PEDP created a new metadata standard in 2025, inspired by Harvard Dataverse’s CAFE project and with ISO metadata standards with FAIR principles at the forefront.
In doing so PEDP:
- standardized descriptions across document types and archived in different places online
- improved retrieval and sharing of information
- ensured interoperability across systems
- ensured the preservation of its information over time
- improved its archival descriptions
- demonstrated consistency across records management
PEDP’s Data Preservation Working Group are the stewards of the metadata for all archives and are ensuring that the PEDP Metadata Standard is upheld, as well as maintaining the Standard itself and updating it as necessary.