With California's drought rapidly changing the outlook for natural resources, decision-makers must be equipped with information and tools that facilitate clear and rapid decisions. The proposed grant would fund the standardization, visualization, and sharing of Level 3 data. The Delta Conservancy will work through federal and state agency partners as well as the Delta Restoration Network to (a) collect high-priority datasets with strategic value for the region, (b) visualize those datasets geospatially, (c) share those datasets via web services, and (d) implement the best available measures of planning effectiveness, including landscape-scale habitat metrics, provided by an existing project funded by CDFW, that can be used to plan restoration and mitigation projects. By integrating the resources into EcoAtlas, the Delta Conservancy will meet these goals.

EcoAtlas is a tool for visualizing the condition and extent of California's aquatic resources. It has been created under the auspices of the California Wetland Monitoring Workgroup (CWMW) of the California Water Quality Monitoring Council (Council), and supported with funding from EPA Region 9. EcoAtlas is currently incorporated into selected Regional Water Boards to support water quality control planning. It contains a wealth of map-based information (Level 1) and rapid assessment data (Level 2). However, efforts to-date to incorporate site-specific quantitative data (Level 3) have been more limited.Coupling the Level 1 landscape metrics with the Level 3 intensive data will close a critical gap for policy-makers and resource managers whose decisions must rely on a weight-of-evidence approach to meaningful aggregations of the best available information.