Ability to Produce Clean and Abundant Water - version 2 2016

In the original APCAW (v2) the Open Space Institute (OSI) sought to develop a metric to measure the relative capacity of small scale (HUC12) watersheds to produce clean surface and ground water. In 2014, two different HUC12-based metrics (i.e., “Ability to Produce Good Quality Surface Water” and “Ability to Produce Good Quality Ground Water”) were calculated and used by OSI to evaluate land protection projects. In 2015, OSI combined these two metrics into one metric that considers watershed conditions (e.g. land cover, terrain, and hydrology) and their effects on the abundance and quality of surface and ground water within a reasonably-sized watershed (i.e., HUC12 boundary). The revised index the APCAWv2 makes a number of changes to the original work, notably watershed boundaries are now based on the National Hydrography Dataset Plus version 2 Horizon Systems and EPA. The NHDplusv2 lateral drainage areas were originally defined by the USGS 1:100 k watershed boundaries. For more information on the spatial boundaries used in this analysis .

This data is hosted at, and may be downloaded or accessed from PASDA, the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access Geospatial Data Clearinghouse http://www.pasda.psu.edu/uci/DataSummary.aspx?dataset=1613