The Global Hydrology and Climate Center and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center conducted a fact-finding case study for the Data Management Working Group (DMWG) now referred to as the Data and Information Working Group (DIWG), of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) to determine the feasibility of an interagency National Environmental Change Information System (NECIS). In order to better understand the data and information needs of policy and decision makers at the national, state and local level, the DIWG asked the case study team to choose a regional water resources issue in the southeastern United States that had an impact on a diverse group of stakeholders. The southeastern United States was also of interest because the region experiences interannual climatic variations and impacts due to El Nino and La Nina. Jointly, with input from the DIWG, a focus on future water resources planning in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River basins of Alabama. Georgia, and Florida was selected. A tristate compact and water allocation formula is currently being negotiated between the states and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE) that will affect the availability of water among competing uses within the ACF River basin. All major reservoirs on the ACF are federally owned and operated by the U.S. Army COE. A similar two-state negotiation is ongoing that addresses the water allocations in the adjacent Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) River basin, which extends from northwest Georgia to Mobile Bay. The ACF and ACT basins are the subject of a comprehensive river basin study involving many stakeholders. The key objectives of this case study were to identify specific data and information needs of key stakeholders in the ACF region, determine what capabilities are needed to provide the most practical response to these user requests, and to identify any limitations in the use of federal data and information.

"Apalachicola Valley Archaeology is a major holistic synthesis of the archaeological record and what is known or speculated about the ancient Apalachicola and lower Chattahoochee Valley region of northwest Florida, southeast Alabama, and southwest Georgia. Volume 1 coverage spans from the time of the first human settlement, around 14,000 years ago, to the Middle Woodland period, ending about AD 700. Author Nancy Marie White had devoted her career to this archaeologically neglected region, and she notes that it is environmentally and culturally different from better-known regions nearby. Early chapters relate the individual ecosystems and the types of typical and unusual material culture, including stone, ceramic, bone, shell, soils, and plants. Other chapters are devoted to the archaeological Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland periods. Topics include migration/settlement, sites, artifacts and material culture, subsistence and lifeways, culture and society, economics, warfare, and rituals. White's prodigious work reveals that Paleoindian habitation was more extensive than once assumed. Archaic sites were widespread, and those societies persisted through the first global warming when the Ice Age ended. Besides new stone technologies, pottery appeared in the Late Archaic period. Extensive inland and coastal settlement is documented. Development of elaborate religious or ritual systems is suggested by Early Woodland times when the first burial mounds appear. Succeeding Middle Woodland societies expanded this mortuary ceremony in about forty mounds. In the Middle Woodland, the complex pottery of the concurrent Swift Creek and the early Weeden Island ceramic series as well as the imported exotic objects show an increased fascination with the ornate and unusual. Native American lifeways continued with gathering-fishing-hunting subsistence systems similar to those of their ancestors. The usefulness of the information to modern society to understand human impacts on environments and vice versa caps the volume"--