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Proposing LTPBR Sites

Take me to Canvas Assignment

Link to CEWA/WATS 5622 Canvas Assignment

Background

In the planning (CEWA/WATS 5622) class, you are going to complete the Conservation Planning Process for LTPBR at a real riverscape. If you take the desgn (CEWA/WATS 5623) class, you will also need to complete this step.

You get to choose that riverscape. Prior to our first class, please submit to this discussion board a posting with your top choice and a second choice for a riverscape where you will propose to complete the assignment. This need not be a riverscape you have been to or will visit. It does need to be a riverscape where you can reasonably address the key planning questions from available information and Google Earth. This will limit you to riverscapes in which the imagery and existing data is good enough to "see the riverscape", and assess its condition, risks within and adjacent to it, as well as recovery potential.

Assignment

Please create a posting here by replying to the thread (use top "Reply" instead of replying to someone else's thread) that answers the following questions for your first choice and second choice:

  1. What is the name of the stream/river that flows through your site?
  2. What is the name of the property or site and who owns it?
  3. What is the name of the watershed (in the US, please provide the USGS 10 digit HUC or hydrologic unit code)?
  4. Provide a URL to a QRiS Riverscapes Studio Project in Data Exchange (or less preferably, MyMapsLinks to an external site. or Google EarthLinks to an external site.)
  5. Why have you proposed this site?
  6. Can you see what you need to from imagery or is other information available to you to assess conditions and recovery potential?

Everyone should have a post with Site 1 - Answers to six questions in numbered list, and Site 2 - Answers to same six questions in numbered list. Here is a template you can copy if you like:

SITE X

  1. Stream/river name: Freeflowing Creek
  2. Name of the property or site: My Site Ownership: Bureau of Land Management
  3. 10 digit HUC: 1601020207
  4. Map: (embed or provide link - see below)
  5. Why I chose this proposed this site? It needs some help.
  6. Can you see what you need to from imagery or is other information available to you to assess conditions and recovery potential? Yes and I can tell you why (unlike Joe did in his example).

We are asking you for two sites (they can be in same thread), in case the first site you propose we believe is too difficult for you to assess remotely in a three week class. We will give you feedback as to whether or not your site will work well, or what might be difficult about it to help you make your choice for next week.

What to Turn In for credit

Submit a URL in Canvas assignment (enrolled 5622 students only) of your forum discussion post and make sure your shared project has a publicly accessible and working link to your QRiS project.

Tutorials

Please follow these instructions to perform this assessment in Riverscapes Studio (QRiS). To intall QRiS and QGIS, see here (make sure you do not install the latest version of QGIS, but instead the long-term stable release or earlier). You will submit a URL to your shared Riverscapes Studio project in the Data Exchange.

warning

QGIS is free and will work on a PC, Linux or Mac, but do not use the latest release. Instead see here for safe releases to use. There are often bugs in the latest QGIS releases that prevent the QRiS plugin from working correctly on all machines.

It is possible to do this assignment without QRiS and just doing the mapping manually in Google Earth or Google Maps or similar and using the paper form. Even if you don't have any GIS experience, you can get started easily here.

How to create a new QRiS project and site

The steps are pretty simple:

  1. Add some contextual basemap imagery to QGIS.
  2. Browse to the location of your proposed site.
  3. Create a new QRiS project.
  4. Add (an) Area of Interest for your study site(s).
  5. Create a Riverscape for your study site(s) (see here for tutorial on mapping a valley bottom)
  6. Upload your project to data exchange, make it public, and get share link or citaiton.
note

The download at end of video revealed a minor bug in the upload feature that is now fixed in > v. 1.2.4.

How to Upload to Data Exchange

info

While we are storngly recommending and showing you how to do this assessment within Riverscapes Studio (QRiS), you can do the same assessment in Google MyMaps or Google Earth.