WAWMA: Western American Watershed Map Archive
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The Western American Watershed Map Archive, or WAWMA, mission is to collect and maintain geographic maps and data covering watersheds of the western United States, Canada and Mexico for the use of the public. WAWMA is a publicly funded independent organization housed on a small campus in Provo, Utah. WAWMA's collection holds physical and digital maps dating from the earliest years of cartography in Western America to modern GIS data sets.
What Is a Watershed?
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(Columbia River Watershed, USGS 2008)
A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is:
"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."
Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They cross county, state, and national boundaries. In the continental U.S., there are 2,110 watersheds; including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico, there are 2,267 watersheds.
"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."
Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They cross county, state, and national boundaries. In the continental U.S., there are 2,110 watersheds; including Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico, there are 2,267 watersheds.
Provo, Utah
Provo, Utah is a small city of 114,000 people located just south of Salt Lake City. It is the home of Brigham Young University. Provo's local fiber internet service 'iProvo' has been recently acquired by Google fiber for incorporation into the Google fiber project. Google has guaranteed that public institutions will receive free access to this service and WAWMA makes full use of the advanced data services available.