The Multistate Aquatic Resources Information System: New Design and Applied Uses

The Multistate Aquatic Resources Information System (MARIS) was conceived and designed by state agencies to provide select elements from multiple states’ fisheries databases through a common web query process.  The driving concepts of MARIS are to relieve the burden of repetitive data requests being received by state agencies, leverage the value of the investments made by agencies in the collection of information to additional purposes, and to provide fundamental data that could be used to evaluate status and trends of aquatic species populations. A major expansion of content and geographic coverage, combined with a substantial redesign of the web interface, have led to an increased use of these data.  How useful are data collected by different agencies under different conditions? An analysis of the theoretical utility and examples of the actual applications will be discussed, including limitations and considerations for its use.