The Upper Merced River Watershed Council (UMRWC) is a volunteer organization working to protect and sustain the natural, cultural, and economic resources of the Upper Merced River Watershed. Individuals, local organizations, and agency staff participate in its planning activities and projects. The mission of the Upper Merced River Watershed Council is to work with individuals and organizations to protect and enhance the natural, economic, and cultural resources of the Watershed through education, community-based projects, responsible planning, and stewardship

The upper Merced River watershed encompasses approximately 700,000 acres from the headwaters near Triple Divide Peak to the New Exchequer Dam on Lake McClure, the main storage reservoir on the river (capacity 1 million acre-ft.). A significant part of the Merced River headwaters lies within Yosemite National Park (312,334 acres), while 271,810 acres lie within the jurisdiction of the and National Forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managed land. Approximately 4 million visitors from all over the world come to Yosemite National Park and the watershed each year. Yosemite National Park has been and continues to be the focus of study by various federal, state, and local agencies and educational organizations. The Park and the surrounding landscape continue to be the focus of numerous researchers.

In 2004, The UMRWC received a CALFED grant, administered by the State Water Resources Control Board, to fund projects within the watershed, one of which was to develop this watershed web portal and digital library. The goal of this portal is to help stakeholders collaborate to benefit the watershed. A key step to achieving this is to provide equal access to bibliographic references, databases, GIS layers, maps, photos, projects, people, researchers, organizations, and other informational resources. At this point, this portal is a work in progress. It will improve as people use it, as other watersheds use and buiild upon this open source, public domain software and as more funding is found to do such tasks as importing catalogs from the National Park Services and other sources into the library.

Read more about accessing and entering data or about the watershed portals and libraries concept.