Getting data from Data Exchange to QRIS

An astute user posed the reasonable question:

Is manual download the only way to get existing projects from the Data Exchange into a QGIS project? For example if I want multiple Valley Bottom Projects from the Data Exchange, I should manually download each project into my project folder?

I can't find anything stating this explicitly in the knowledge base. The Riverscapes Viewer in QGIS feels like it should be connected to the Data Exchange but I can only select base maps currently. Maybe this is a possible feature enhancement? I'm just starting out with this software so wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Yes, currently the primary pathway for "getting" layers from existing projects in the Data Exchange is to manually download them. 

You download the individual project(s) for your area of interest, and then manually load them to the Viewer, and then (if you want), you import them into a QRiS project. In this video, we show some examples of how that is done:

What if I have an Area of Interest that spans multiple projects?

If it is just a small number of riverscape projects (e.g. VBET over two HUC 10s), and you don't mind importing layers from those multiple projects, you can manually repeat the same workflow. We show that in the video below. But, you can also (see 14 minutes onwards), import merged VBET projects, where a request has been submitted to merge multiple projects into one. In this example we use the example of the Upper Bear River Merged VBET. 

Future

Being able to add projects or to viewer and/or QRiS directly from the Data Exchange is a feature we are bringing in. We are doing this via web mapping services. In the video we show off a beta version from Staging and arm wave about how you will be able to add references to specific project layers without having to manually download them. This will help keep layers small for context layers. You will still need to import layers if you wish to do analyses with them.