In a state where water has been a serious public policy issue for many decades, creating an atlas of water resources and usage was considered an important undertaking. That's just what happened in 1979 when the state of California released this groundbreaking atlas. After its release that year, it was hailed as a major achievement in cartography and scientific endeavor from a variety of groups and organizations, including the Quarterly Review of Biology and the California Historical Quarterly. Recently David Rumsey and Cartography Associates scanned the entire original volume in all of its detailed glory, and it is now available for general use here. The atlas can be viewed in a number of different formats, including pdf files or an online book, courtesy of the Internet Archive. Plates from the atlas include "Crop Patterns and Applied Water", "Annual Runoff and Seasonality", and "Measured and Unimpaired Streamflows". It's a masterful work, and one that visitors will want to let friends know about.
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