BUILDING A FAIR DATA LAYER FOR NATIONAL PARKS THROUGH A NATIONAL NATURAL LABS PROGRAM

Geoscientists in the United States have long valued public lands as natural laboratories. FAIR access to from publicly funded studies in National Parks is lacking. Past and present inventory and monitoring efforts by National Park Service (NPS) scientists reach the park resource managers but are fragmented and varied in their public delivery. And vice versa, NPS staff are not always aware of data sets and research conducted by external scientists. We explore ideas for increasing access to NPS geoscience research by adopting new data management structures and support.

We make three suggestions: 1) Offer Parks support of data scientists who serve as FAIR custodians; 2) Continue to maintain and adapt national, public, standardized databases, digital file repositories, and physical collections; and 3) Develop data search and analysis dashboards for public data.

NPS sites operate in a decentralized way but receive centralized support from national level divisions of the Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate (NRSS) directorate. We envision a park-led path to FAIR data practices supported by network, regional, or national level NPS staff. Sites that opt-in to the National Natural Labs program can receive in-person and virtual research and technical support from NRSS. NPS and external scientists doing research in/around parks would register their results with NRSS FAIR data custodian at/near the time of data collection to increase data reusability and minimize data loss/dark data. Public dashboards would allow teachers, students, and the public to access registered research products. FAIR data custodians may also modernize and transfer existing non-FAIR legacy data and metadata onto the new system. Lastly, some custodians may interview outgoing NPS staff to catalog the institutional knowledge accrued over their tour of duty.

There is a discrepancy in the amount of data generated by scientists working in National Parks and the amount of that information that reaches other scientists and the public. By recognizing National Parks as the National Natural Labs that they are, providing expertise and technical infrastructure support, and letting the Parks lead, we think FAIR data practices can be implemented.