In an effort to help connect Native Waters on Arid Lands (NWAL) project participants with climate planning resources and other important documents related to agriculture, climate and water, the NWAL team has created a document library that can be accessed via an online web portal.

The library, which currently holds about 400 documents, is organized into ten main topic areas: natural environment, paleo/archaeology, water issues, agriculture, climate, law/policy, traditional knowledge, education/outreach, sustainability and economics. NWAL team members have been working to fill the library with useful resources, with a focus on documents that are hard to find in a traditional academic or public library.

“The purpose of the document library is not to compete with college libraries where people can access peer-reviewed journal articles, but to provide access to documents that are sometimes harder to find, such as federal reports, country reports, and graduate theses,” team member Dr. Alexandra Lutz explained.

A screenshot of the document library’s spatial search feature.

To locate specific documents, users can search the NWAL document library using keyword search terms or complete a spatial search on an interactive map. At present, many of the documents are focused on the Arizona-New Mexico region, but the geographical scope is expanding as more resources are added.

To use the NWAL document library, users must first create an account with a login ID and password. To register for an account, or to provide feedback about information needs, please contact Alexandra Lutz at [email protected].

To access the NWAL document library, continue to: https://nwal.dri.edu/NWALAccount/Login