Can I get riverscape projects for something bigger than a HUC 10?

FAQ: .. "is there are way to merge projects in the Data Exchange ... meaning if I want riverscape projects that cover a HUC 8 or 6 or something like that I can just download one project instead of all the HUC 10's that make up the bigger area?"

Answer:

Yes. There are at least four possible ways (first is a simple work around)

1. Download the individual HUC 10 projects that make up the HUC 8 you are interested (typically 4 to 8 HUC 10s make up a HUC 8), and just use the GIS Viewer to have all projects loaded simultaneously. 
2. Download above (1) and union specific layers of interest that you want to do a summary analysis on.
3. Request a custom extent run for a HUC 8 (currently by submitting a ticket here). Note that HUC 6 is generally too large for many of the production-grade network models to run at. 
4. Request a custom Project Union (currently by submitting a ticket here ) and we will run a script to Union existing projects and make them available in Data Exchange. 
5. Request a custom Synthesis Project scrape (currently by submitting a ticket here )

In the United States, we run many of the network models at the scale of a HUC 10 because it is keeps project file sizes manageable, computation times reasonable, and is an adequate spatial extent to serve the needs of many people interested in placing their riverscapes in a watershed context.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Answer:
• What's That?
  • Have all projects loaded simultaneously 
  • Union specific layers of interest
  • Request a custom extent run for a HUC 8 
  • Request a custom Project Union 
  • Request a custom Synthesis Project Scrape 

What's that mean?

Have all projects loaded simultaneously 

If you simply want access to projects spanning an area larger than the default HUC 10s, the easiest thing is to download those projects for the area of interest and have them all loaded at once. While the Web Riverscapes Viewer in the data exchange does not allow this, both the ArcGIS AddIn and QGIS Plugin of Riverscapes Viewer allow multiple projects to be loaded at once. This will allow you to display and drill into any layer in any locality. 

Union specific layers of interest

If what you want is to summarize or query by attributes in a layer across your larger area of interest, you can simply use a multi-union processing command for vector datasets, or a a merge command for raster datasets. This will not update any project reports, but will allow you to do your own analyses. 

Request a custom extent run for a HUC 8 

The RC will do CyberCastor runs for many of our production grade-network models for custom extents upon request for a modest fee (we charge much less if you make the outputs freely available for others on the Data Exchange). The easiest (and cheapest) runs are for us to run the models at a HUC 12 (smaller) or HUC 8 (scale).   

Request a custom Project Union 

The RC can run a custom project union where a custom script is run to merge and union the geospatial data and update metrics and reports and package into a single project. This is only possible for individual riverscape project types (e.g. RS Context, VBET).

Request a custom Synthesis Project Scrape 

Many times you don't need all the data, but instead just want to get the summary metrics (e.g. those values stored on DGO (discrete general objects) and IGOs (integrated geographic objects) on riverscape networks. We have scraper scripts that leverage the Data Exchange APIs that can be used to go to all projects of a particular type and grab specific geometries and attributes and synthesize into a larger project. For example, this VBET Synthesis Project, harvested all the VBET metrics from the output DGOs into a single geopackage and riverscapes project. Put another way, the script scraped over 12,000 VBET projects (each at HUC 10 scale) housed in the Data Exchange and representing over 80 million DGOs/IGOs across well over 6.5 million miles of riverscapes, and then sythensized those terabytes of data into a 20 GB database.