ECOHYDROLOGY Ecohydrol. 2, 391–398 (2009) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/eco.89 Data management to enhance long-term watershed research capacity: context and STEWARDS case study † Jean L. Steiner, 1 * E. John Sadler, 2 Jerry L. Hatfield, 3 Greg Wilson, 4 David James, 3 Bruce Vandenberg, 5 John D. Ross, 1 Teri Oster 2 and Kevin Cole 3 1 USDA, ARS, El Reno, OK, USA 2 USDA, ARS, Columbia, MO, USA 3 USDA, ARS, NSTL, Ames, IA, USA 4 USDA, ARS, OIRP, Beltsville, MD, USA 5 USDA, ARS, Ft. Collins, CO, USA ABSTRACT Water resources are under pressure globally due to growing population, human migration into arid regions, and diverse competing needs. In recent decades, progress in the study of information (informatics) and its manipulation via computer-based tools has stimulated development of data systems in many natural resources disciplines. Such informatics systems provide data storage, access, visualization, perhaps with analysis/modelling tools, and download capacity. Application of database technology can overcome problems of fragmentation, inadequate documentation, and cumbersome manipulation of complex data. Data management was a critical requirement for USDA’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) which was established to quantify environmental effects of agricultural conservation practices. Although USDA and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have conducted watershed research since early 20th century, the data have been managed and disseminated independently from each research location, reducing accessibility and utility of these data for policy-relevant, multi-site analyses. To address these concerns, STEWARDS (Sustaining the Earth’s Watersheds—Agricultural Research Data System) was developed to compile, document, and provide access to data from loosely coupled research watersheds. The STEWARDS case study is used to illustrate the role of data management in enhancing ecohydrological research and evolving information technologies available to improve data management from complex ecohydrologic studies. Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS informatics; database; hydrology; agroecosystems; open source data; STEWARDS; CEAP Received 29 September 2008; Accepted 27 July 2009 INTRODUCTION In the face of growing demand for water and projected climate change, uncertainty about precipitation fre- quency, precipitation intensity, evapotranspiration, runoff, and snowmelt poses severe ecological and societal chal- lenges. Solutions to a multitude of ecological and eco- nomic problems will require new approaches to gover- nance, improved information technologies and science capacity, and mobilization and empowering of commu- nities (e.g. RNRF, 2005). Considerable research effort is underway to develop water management tools (e.g. Scholten et al., 2007; Leone and Chen, 2007), but adop- tion of decision support tools by users outside the devel- opment teams lags, partially because of a ‘disconnect’ between the conceptual models of the development teams and the intended end-users (McIntosh et al., 2007). Since development of the world wide web, there has been movement toward more open access to information. The Science Commons project (http://sciencecommons. org, accessed 25 June 2009) describes the evolution of a * Correspondence to: Jean L. Steiner, USDA, ARS, El Reno, OK, USA. E-mail: jean.steiner@ars.usda.gov † This article is a U.S.Government work and is in the public domain in the U.S.A. call for open access to information through declarations such as the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publish- ing (http://www.earlham.edu/¾peters/fos/bethesda.htm, accessed 25 June 2009), the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration. html, accessed 25 June 2009), and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/, accessed 25 June 2009), with the latter two advocat- ing open access to data and databases. Klump et al. (2006) discussed implications of open access informa- tion, including the need for incentives to authors and protection of the intellectual rights of the author while allowing use of data by the scientific community. The critical role of data in advancing hydrologic sci- entific understanding was emphasized by the National Research Council, ‘Intensifying water scarcity cannot be successfully addressed in the absence of reliable data about the quantity and quality of water over time and at different locations. The end-of-century trend of invest- ing fewer and fewer dollars in data-gathering efforts will need to be reversed if availability is to be adequately characterized’ (NRC, 2001). Similarly, Hornberger et al. (2001), discussing climate change research, emphasized Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.