THE MULTISTATE AQUATIC RESOURCES INFORMATION-SYSTEM - AN INTERNET SYSTEM TO ACCESS FISHERIES INFORMATION IN THE UPPER MIDWESTERN UNITED-STATES

Traditionally, state agencies in the United States ha cre invested mil lions of dollars to collect information on fish populations. Managemen t of fisheries resources often necessitates the sharing of this inform ation across political boundaries. Federal agencies need to share info rmation on fish populations across political boundaries to complete th e congressional mandates of the Resource Planning Act (U.S. Forest Ser vice) and Resource Conservation Act (Natural Resources Conservation Se rvice). Further, these data are needed for other analyses such as prop osed listings under the Endangered Species Management Act and examinat ions of possible climate change effects. Since 1994, Illinois, Iowa, M ichigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Servic e, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Geological Survey Biological Reso urces Division (formerly National Biological Survey), and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have collaborated to develop a system t o share these data. The Multi-state Aquatic Resources information Syst em (MARIS) uses the World Wide Web to provide access to state-maintain ed fisheries datasets from lakes as well as share standardized summari es with end users. Partners in MARTS have developed three standard lak e datasets for access. Lake datasets contain data on physical, chemica l, catch-per-unit effort, and metadata about each collection. Through this project, the user has access to thousands of fish records across the upper Midwest. As the MARIS project evolves, access to more-divers e fisheries information will become available.