The UK’s national data centre for the terrestrial and freshwater sciences has received a top international accreditation.
The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC), hosted by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) since it was founded in the year 2000, provides an invaluable resource for researchers across the world. It is one of five Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) data centres, covering different scientific fields.
EIDC has been awarded the globally recognised CoreTrustSeal accreditation by the World Data Systems (WDS) and Data Seal of Approval (DSA) repository certification bodies. This validates the centre’s functions, procedures and processes, confirming the information curated is managed and archived in a way that preserves its long-term access and use.
Currently holding around 1,000 datasets, the data centre looks after data derived from more than 75 years of terrestrial and freshwater research programmes carried out in the UK and abroad by scientists from across the world.
Some examples of specific datasets curated by the data centre include the findings from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology’s influential field study on the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees, research into microplastics in the River Thames, plus our Land Cover Maps and Countryside Survey data, as well as statistics from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, of which CEH is a partner.
Dr Kathryn Harrison, part of the team at CEH’s Lancaster site that runs the data centre, says: “Our collection supports important national and international scientific research into a variety of different fields, including wildlife species trends, historic droughts, crop yields and pollutants in the environment.
“We are therefore delighted to receive this certification, which confirms the EIDC is a leader and trusted organisation in the custodianship of research data, as well as enhancing our reputation as a global environmental data hub.”
The EIDC holds data from research carried out by CEH and its predecessors, NERC-funded scientists and other international researchers whose data are of long term value to the terrestrial and freshwater scientific community. For more information about what datasets are held by EIDC, see http://eidc.ceh.ac.uk/