• Sign up for IEDA2’s Action2Sustain mailing list to become engaged and stay informed. Via the mailing list, you can
• Volunteer for interviews that we will be conducting as part of our efforts to build a sustainable business model, especially if you have connections to potential partners and customers from academia, federal and state agencies, and the commercial sector. 
• Share your use cases and impact stories about EarthChem, LEPR/traceDs, and SESAR. These stories will be collected and published (with you as co-author!) to demonstrate the essential value of the systems. These stories will also help us identify priorities during the transition phase.
• Participate in upcoming virtual and in-person EarthChem, LEPR/traceDs, and SESAR community events to provide feedback on emerging approaches to sustainability, and new ideas.
• Advocate for EarthChem, LEPR/traceDs, and SESAR with journals, societies, and institutional leadership to amplify the importance of sustaining geochemical data infrastructure.
• Put us in contact with decision makers at your organization, if your organization uses and benefits from IEDA2 systems and would be interested in becoming a sponsor, partner, or paying customer.
• Continue depositing data in the EarthChem Library to ensure preservation, quality, and visibility of your data.
• Continue to register your samples in SESAR to make your samples findable and accessible, and obtain IGSNs for unambiguous linking

EarthChem, SESAR, and LEPR/traceDs play a fundamental role in today’s geoscience research. They provide globally unique capabilities that ensure geochemical, petrological, and sample‑based data to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) for the global research community. The EarthChem Library is the only data repository fully dedicated to the publication and curation of geochemical and experimental data and helps researchers to comply with journal and funder data sharing requirements. SESAR is the only sample registry and metadata catalog open to any researcher worldwide. The PetDB database is the only global synthesis of geochemical data for ocean floor rocks.  The EarthChem Portal provides a unique central point of access to nearly 50 million analytical values through a collaboration with the GEOROC database and the USGS, a service of growing relevance for exploring and analyzing large volumes of curated geochemical data using AI. International users and partners — including AuScope, GEOROC, GFZ Data Services, and numerous U.S. researchers — consistently emphasize that there are no equivalent services in the U.S. scientific landscape.

NSF has funded IEDA since 2010, and IEDA2 through its Geoinformatics Program since 2022. The IEDA2 Cooperative Agreement with NSF will end on July 31, 2027. NSF recently announced that the Geoinformatics program will not continue and that the timeline, scope, and availability of funding for a future successor solicitation at this point is highly uncertain. The general trend is that future NSF funding will be very tight and unpredictable. The cuts to NSF programs such as Geoinformatics will impact data infrastructure beyond IEDA2. We - the IEDA2 leadership and the IEDA2 Community Advisory Board - urge the geochemistry community to come together at this critical point to clearly articulate their shared data needs, and explore and agree on a path toward sustainable solutions.

IEDA2 is actively pursuing multiple parallel strategies to achieve sustainability of services:

• New business models for both EarthChem and SESAR, including value‑added services that customers can pay for that would support both open science and financial sustainability.
• Partnerships that will allow EarthChem, LEPR/traceDs, and SESAR 
• To broaden their user base;
• To operate more efficiently (e.g.,through shared infrastructure);
• To ensure resilience of data holdings.   
• Engagement with journals, scientific societies, federal agencies, industry groups, and international data facilities to identify collaborative and diversified support mechanisms.
• Preparing core operations for a “Keep‑The‑Lights‑On” status while seeking efficiencies and prioritizing services.

Throughout these discussions, open access remains a foundational principle.

Over the coming months, we will continue to refine our roadmap, deepen partnerships, and explore new models that safeguard long‑term access to the IEDA2 data resources that the Earth science community relies on. This is a moment of challenge but also an opportunity to reimagine a sustainable, community‑driven future for geochemical cyberinfrastructure on a global scale.

Thank you for your continued support and engagement. Together, we can shape a resilient future for IEDA2 and the global geochemistry community.