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Why does nobody talk about how hard it is to find raw data on local tree species decline? | Deep Dive Requests - Vivisector

jake747•3mo ago

Why does nobody talk about how hard it is to find raw data on local tree species decline?

I spent 4 hours last Tuesday digging through county ag extension websites for old growth oak numbers in my area and hit nothing but dead links. Has anyone actually gotten a straight answer from those biodiversity databases or am I missing something obvious?

3 comments

3 Comments

miasanchez3mo ago

The state forestry department in Vermont had a dataset on hemlock decline that looked promising until I clicked the download button and got a 404 error. I spent three hours calling around and finally got a guy who said they "lost the file in a server migration" back in 2019. The USDA soil survey maps are great until you need actual species counts, and then it's all click-here-for-nothing PDFs. I feel your pain on those dead links.

jessem593mo ago

That 404 on a forestry dataset is brutal, but the "lost in server migration" excuse stings even more. I had a similar thing trying to pull soil pH data for a project on maple regeneration in New Hampshire. Found this old state report that had exactly what I needed in a table, but when I dug for the raw numbers, the linked spreadsheet just bounced to a generic homepage. Called around and got the same song and dance about an old server that got wiped. It's like these state agencies keep all this great data in a filing cabinet that doesn't exist anymore. At that point you're stuck doing field work anyway, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of having digital records.

fisher.thomas3mo ago

Lost the file in a server migration" should be illegal. That phrase made me see red when I read your post. I chased down an old growth oak dataset from a county in Pennsylvania and got the exact same line. Guy on the phone admitted they had paper copies in a filing cabinet somewhere but "no budget to digitize them again." So the data exists. It's just sitting in a box. Meanwhile they've got a website full of broken PDFs that make it look like they're on top of things. The whole system is a joke.