The USDA Agricultural Research Service has supported watershed research since the 1930s. Data from USDA Agricultural Research Service watersheds have been disseminated independently at each location, hindering multi-site analyses. A virtual team spanning diverse organizational units developed a web-based system, Sustaining the Earth's WatershedsAgricultural Research Data System (STEWARDS) that allows users to search, visualize, and download soil, water, climate, management, and economic data from Conservation Effects Assessment Project benchmark watersheds. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of STEWARDS and discuss challenges that were met to deliver STEWARDS on time, according to requirements, and within available resources. The information technology specialists had to understand that vague and changing requirements are reasonable for a system to support loosely coupled research across diverse watersheds. Researchers and data managers had to learn to communicate clearly about their data. Open communication, respect for perspectives and constraints of others, and a shared commitment to the goal provided the basis for trust. Anticipated benefits of STEWARDS include data preservation, increased data use, and facilitation of hydrological research.

Abstract:To support the USDA Agricultural Research Service Conservation Effects Assessment Project, a publicly available Web-based watershed data system, named Sustaining the Earth's Watersheds-Agricultural Research Data System (STEWARDS), was developed to provide data search, viewing, and downloading capabilities. The objectives of this paper are to (1) describe the data within STEWARDS, (2) describe the process of accessing watershed data and (3) provide an overview of the system management. STEWARDS is a data delivery system with a geographic information system interface, using space, time, and topic as key fields for searching an extensive database of soil, water, climate, land management, and socio-economic data from multiple long-term research watersheds. STEWARDS facilitates (1) researchers in obtaining USDA Agricultural Research Service historic watershed data for hydrological studies; (2) modelers in retrieving measured data over extensive time periods for model calibration and validation in watershed assessments to support CEAP; and (3) watershed managers, partners, and stakeholders in accessing long term data to support decisionmaking for selecting effective conservation practices. Key words: Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP)-database access and usedatabase operation-database structure-Sustaining the Earth's Watersheds-Agricultural Research Data System (STEWARDS)The Sustaining the Earth's WatershedsAgricultural Research Data System (STEWARDS) database was developed to organize, store, and provide Web-based access to data from USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) benchmark watersheds associated with the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) Cropland component and eventually other national projects. The CEAP network currently includes 14 instrumented long-term watersheds having, in some cases, more than 60 years of potentially available data. These watershed studies are spread over a range of geophysical contexts and were initiated independently by researchers studying problems at specific locations. Consequently, the data collected vary, the methods for collecting and storing the data vary, and insufficient (and variable) effort has been expended to store, organize, or deliver the data at the national level. As a result, data that are critical for the success of CEAP, or other hydrologic analyses, are not consistently available to users (Steiner et al. 2003).Recognizing that data embodied in this network are now increasingly relevant to the CEAP, a team of researchers and information technology staff within CEAP was requested to create a database system capable of delivering the long-term USDA ARS watershed data for research purposes. This team is represented in the author list, and team operations necessary to achieve the objectives are described in Steiner et al. (2008). Here, our objectives are to (1) describe the data within STEWARDS, (2) describe the process of accessing watershed data and (3) provide an overview of the system management. Objectives 1 and 2 are necessaril...