The Mid-Atlantic Watershed Atlas (MAWA): Open access data search & watershed-based community building

The Mid-Atlantic region in the United States (US) is composed of a diverse range of gradients across its natural and human systems. These gradients encompass heavily urbanized population centers, agriculture dominated valleys, reforested headwaters, and some of the most important estuaries in North America. The Mid-Atlantic Watershed Atlas (MAWA) portal has been developed to encourage public access and use of a wide range of freely available data resources. Moreover, the system has been designed to facilitate emergent geospatial tagging to identify the individuals, groups, and agencies shaping the region’s water resources. The goal of the system is to facilitate improved regional watershed knowledge, provide information to individual stakeholders, and support broad regional initiatives. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Data/Software availability http://www.mawa.psu.edu.