In 1982, a multidisciplinary group of forest scientists met to develop experimental protocols for collection and analysis of tree cores over a multistate area within the eastern U.S. The project that evolved from the meeting was entitled Forest Responses to Anthropogenic Stress (FORAST) and was designed (1) to determine whether evidence of recent alteration of long-term growth patterns of several species of eastern forest trees was apparent in tree-ring chronologies from within the region and (2) to identify environmental variables which were temporally and spatially correlated with and, hence, plausible contributors to any observed changes. The FORAST data tape contains 7 files (3 of which are in the SAS format): (1) the JCL required to read the tape; (2) documentation of the tape structure; (3) JCL used to read an earlier version of the data base; (4) JCl used to convert original version into the version; (5) FORASTC: SAS data base containing 13 data sets concerning site selection, sampling characteristics, meteorological data, air pollution, and climatic data; (6) FORASTR: SAS data base with 19 data sets by region (sampling area) for ring-width and basal area (increments for 7000 trees); and (7) FORASTS: FORASTR data sorted into 14 data sets by species.