Mark Servilla

The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) is a trustworthy, stable data repository, and data management support organization for the environmental scientist. In a bottom‐up community process, EDI was built with the premise that freely and easily available data are necessary to advance the understanding of complex environmental processes and change, to improve transparency of research results, and to democratize ecological research. EDI provides tools and support that allow the environmental researcher to easily integrate data publishing into the research workflow. Almost ten years since going into production, we analyze metadata to provide a general description of EDI's collection of data and its data management philosophy and placement in the repository landscape. We discuss how comprehensive metadata and the repository infrastructure lead to highly findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data by evaluating compliance with specific community proposed FAIR criteria. Finally, we review measures and patterns of data (re)use, assuring that EDI is fulfilling its stated premise.

1. The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) is a trustworthy, stable data repository and data management support organization for the environmental scientist. In a bottom-up community process EDI was built with the premise that freely and easily available data are necessary to advance the understanding of complex environmental processes and change, to improve transparency of research results, and to democratize ecological research. 2. EDI provides tools and support that allow the environmental researcher to easily integrate data publishing into the research workflow. 3. Almost ten years since going into production, we analyze metadata to provide a general description of EDI’s collection of data and its data management philosophy and placement in the repository landscape. We discuss how comprehensive metadata and the repository infrastructure lead to highly findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data by evaluating compliance with specific community proposed FAIR criteria. 4. Finally, we review measures and patterns of data (re)use, assuring that EDI is fulfilling its stated premise.

For many ecologists, publishing data in a data repository is a new, unfamiliar task. To reduce the learning curve, the Environmental Data Initiative has developed user‐friendly software to make capturing and submitting data and metadata a simple process. In this article, we introduce ezEML and discuss use cases for researchers who publish data infrequently or information managers who regularly update multiple datasets.

Assessing and understanding the extent and trajectory of change in inland waters is a great challenge, due in part to both differing methods — and cultures — of agencies that provide synoptic observations of Earth’s systems as well as the community of lake scientists whose research generates heterogeneous and distributed in situ data. Advancements require socio-technological initiatives that harness the resources of the highly diverse and distributed community of ecologists, as well as the products and expertise of the satellite remote sensing community. Here we describe a prototype for linking in situ and remotely sensed data for lakes through the collaborative efforts of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI), and NASA. GLEON provides a community of lake scientists and data from lake observatories. EDI curates and publishes data and ensures conformity to rigorous FAIR principles. NASA provides the expertise and workflows to deliver remotely sensed data products on demand. The integration of the data and the communities provides a foundation for a new generation of lake science.

The Enabling FAIR Data project has brought together a broad spectrum of Earth, space, and environmental science leaders to ensure that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.