  The PdBI (Plateau de Bure Interferometer) Arcsecond Whirlpool Survey (PAWS)
has mapped the molecular gas in the central ~9kpc of M51 in its 12CO(1-0) line
emission at cloud-scale resolution of ~40pc using both IRAM telescopes. We
utilize this dataset to quantitatively characterize the relation of molecular
gas (or CO emission) to other tracers of the interstellar medium (ISM), star
formation and stellar populations of varying ages. Using 2-dimensional maps, a
polar cross-correlation technique and pixel-by-pixel diagrams, we find: (a)
that (as expected) the distribution of the molecular gas can be linked to
different components of the gravitational potential, (b) evidence for a
physical link between CO line emission and radio continuum that seems not to be
caused by massive stars, but rather depend on the gas density, (c) a close
spatial relation between the PAH and molecular gas emission, but no predictive
power of PAH emission for the molecular gas mass,(d) that the I-H color map is
an excellent predictor of the distribution (and to a lesser degree the
brightness) of CO emission, and (e) that the impact of massive (UV-intense)
young star-forming regions on the bulk of the molecular gas in central ~9kpc
can not be significant due to a complex spatial relation between molecular gas
and star-forming regions that ranges from co-spatial to spatially offset to
absent. The last point, in particular, highlights the importance of galactic
environment -- and thus the underlying gravitational potential -- for the
distribution of molecular gas and star formation.
