Conserving and making such data accessible is vitally important. The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology is the custodian of a wealth of ecological datasets. In some cases, these date back to the days of the Nature Conservancy in the 1950s and 1960s. Thanks to the efforts of our Environmental Informatics Liaison scientists, with a bit of help from CEH Fellows, many of these historic datasets are now being saved for long term re-use in the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre.
Source: Ecological data of the past: a vast early warning system | Centre for Ecology & Hydrology