ARCN Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils Database Export, 2025-05-19

The National Park Service (NPS) Arctic Network (ARCN) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) program monitors physical and natural resources in the National Park lands of Alaska including Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kobuk Valley National Park and Noatak National Preserve. Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils is one of the systems chosen by ARCN for long term scientific monitoring in the Parks. I&M has committed to the highest ideals of data quality by monitoring natural systems in the same way, year after year according to published protocols with the goal of providing reliable scientific information to Park managers . The heart of the data management system for the Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils monitoring program is a Microsoft SQL Server relational database which allows Arctic Network to meet its paramount duty: assuring the security, accessibility and longevity of the monitoring data into the future. 

In May, 2025 Arctic Network anticipates reductions in the federal work force that threaten the continued support and maintenance of this database. Consequently, Arctic Network is immediately publishing a snapshot of the Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils monitoring database as an emergency step in assuring the data remain available to the public despite the uncertainty of I&M’s future. This report documents the Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils database export files and their contents.

Methods
Methods are not described in this report but are fully documented and publicly available in the Terrestrial Vegetation and Soils monitoring protocol and standard operating procedures (Table 1).

Table 1. Links to background resources.
Website	https://www.nps.gov/im/arcn/vegsoils.htm
ProjectReference	https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2220078

Data Quality
The data records in this release are provided ‘as-is’. Inventory and Monitoring data typically goes through a value-adding life cycle where data are collected, processed for quality, validated and then certified for analytical use. Under ideal circumstances I&M policy is to only publish fully certified and documented datasets. Due to the urgency with which these data are being published the user should recognize that some or all of the records in this data release may not have been shepherded through all quality control steps, and may or may not contain accurate indicators of quality. Arctic Network is publishing data of unconstrained quality in the belief that it will serve the public interest more than withholding the data entirely.

Authority
U.S. Government Works. Data and content created by government employees within the scope of their employment are not subject to domestic copyright protection under 17 U.S.C. 105. Government works are by default in the U.S. Public Domain.

Database Metadata
See the MetadataTables and MetadataColumns database tables for descriptions.

Tags: data, database, ecological-framework-geology-and-soils-soil-quality-soil-function-and-dynamics, monitoring, soils, tree, vegetation
Organization: Department of the Interior