The California Aquatic Resource Inventory is a standardized statewide map of surface waters and related habitat types, including wetlands, rivers, streams, lakes, and their riparian areas.

CARI is a compilation of the best available local, regional, and statewide maps of surface waters. Datasets used in CARI include the National Wetland Inventory (NWI) of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) of the US Geological Survey, as well as maps from regional and local agencies.

The maps contributing to CARI vary in detail and accuracy, and they represent different time periods, different areas of the state, and different classification systems. These differences greatly complicate efforts to measure changes in the abundance, diversity and condition of surface waters from place to place and over time. These measures will improve as CARI is replaced with a standardized mapping approach developed by statewide experts and implemented regionally to meet the needs of local land use planners and managers.

Local data stewards can contribute to the detail and accuracy of CARI by using the CARI Editor Tool to submit suggested updates, deletions or additions of stream and wetland features. It is important to have the mapped aquatic resources as accurate as possible, since amounts are summarized in various reports and the Landscape Profile Tool.

For more information on CARI and to download the data: http://www.sfei.org/cari.

Last update: Varies by dataset and feature

The current version of CARI (CARI v0.3, released in May 2016), is available on SFEI's Data Center and is a compilation of local, regional, and statewide aquatic resource GIS datasets into a seamless, statewide coverage of aquatic resources that employs a common wetland classification system. Although the dataset varies in detail, and represents different time periods for different areas across the state, CARI is the only statewide aquatic resource dataset that has been compiled and standardized to a common classification system, which can be used to develop landscape level profiles of aquatic resources at a local, regional, or broader scale (as seen with the Landscape Profile tool).

The CARI dataset includes:

the National Wetland Inventory (NWI, last updated in 2010) of the US Fish and Wildlife Service,

the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD, high resolution dataset at 1:2400 scale, last updated in 1999) of the US Geological Survey,

three regional datasets developed by SFEI’s GIS team using CARI’s standardized, and more detailed, mapping protocols and used to demonstrate the WRAMP framework. Links to more information about these mapping efforts are listed below under "Subprojects" (below).

San Francisco Bay Area Aquatic Resources Inventory (BAARI) – 2011

Lake Tahoe Basin (TARIv2.1) - 2016

Laguna de Santa Rosa Plain (near Santa Rosa ,CA. NCARI) – 2013, and

Six County Aquatic Resources Inventory (including Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, El Dorado, Yuba, and Sutter Counties, California) developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers (Sacramento District) through federal funding - 2010.

For more information contact ecoatlas@sfei.org

Dates: 2008 to 2016