2008 Joint Annual Meeting (5-9 Oct. 2008): Enhancing Watershed Research Capacity: The Role of Data Management.
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535-4 Enhancing Watershed Research Capacity: The Role of Data Management.



Monday, 6 October 2008
George R. Brown Convention Center, Exhibit Hall E
Jean L. Steiner1, E. John Sadler2, Jerry Hatfield3, Greg Wilson4, D.E. James5, Bruce Vandenberg6, John Ross1, Teri Oster7 and Kevin Cole8, (1)USDA-ARS, 7207 W Cheyenne Street, El Reno, OK 73036
(2)USDA-ARS, USDA-ARS CS&WQRU, Rm 269 Ag. Eng. Bldg. Univ. of MO, Columbia, MO 65203
(3)National Soil Tilth Laboratory, USDA-ARS, 2110 University Blvd., Ames, IA 50011
(4)OCIO, USDA-ARS, Beltsville, MD 20705
(5)USDA/ARS-NSTL, 2150 Pammel Dr, Ames, IA 50011
(6)USDA-ARS, Ft. Collins, CO 80526
(7)USDA-ARS Cropping Systems & Water Quality Research Unit, 269 Agricultural Engineering Bldg, Columbia, MO 65211
(8)National Soil Tilth Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Ames, IA 50011
Water resources are under growing pressure globally, and in the face of projected climate change, changes in precipitation frequency and intensity; evapotranspiration, runoff, and snowmelt pose severe societal challenges. Interdisciplinary environmental research across natural and social sciences to address challenges in water resource management will require complex and long-term data.  The Agricultural Research Service supports a unique set of long-term research watersheds that can contribute to such analyses.  To effectively retrieve embedded information/knowledge from watershed studies, and apply to national scale hydrological research, a web-based data system, STEWARDS, was developed, to overcome problems of fragmentation, inadequate documentation, and cumbersome manipulation.   This paper will discuss the role of data management in enhancing watershed research capacity, the evolving information technologies that are available to improve watershed data management, and strategies and approaches taken in STEWARDS to compile, document and provide access to data from loosely coupled research watersheds across the ARS program.
See more of: Scale and the Water Balance (Posters)
See more of: A03 Agroclimatology & Agronomic Modeling