Stream Team Instructions

Responsibilities and Protocols for Editing the National Whitewater Inventory; please read before making edits.

The primary goal of the National Whitewater Inventory is to help people select river trips that match their skills and goals, understand what to expect on a given reach, and reduce avoidable accidents. The National Whitewater Inventory also helps paddlers maximize their fun and encourages exploration and discovery. In addition, it serves as an important river management and advocacy tool, helping paddlers visit places sustainably and responsibly, and when needed, defend rivers from threats. This is a significant responsibility for editors, given the diverse audiences served by the National Whitewater Inventory, which extend beyond the paddling community to the general public. Please consider the following best practices when editing or contributing to the National Whitewater Inventory.

  • Only contribute information for which you have a high level of confidence in its accuracy. Firsthand information is ideal. No information is typically better than bad information.
  • Seek, whenever possible, to responsibly add to and build upon others’ work rather than replacing it. Do not delete the work of others without providing an objectively superior replacement. Check with American Whitewater staff or Stream Team volunteers if you have a question.
  • Do not depict or encourage illegal, unsustainable, lewd, off-topic, or objectively unsafe behavior. Report or remedy content that you feel is inconsistent with policy.
  • Remember that agency staff, elected representatives, lawyers, hydropower companies, landowners, river managers, Native American tribes, the press, search and rescue professionals, and many others use the National Whitewater Inventory. Contribute accordingly.
  • Do not use custom HTML or unique formatting. The site is designed to work across many platforms and devices, and custom formatting inhibits this functionality.
  • Have fun, and create something awesome.

Failure to comply with these best practices can result in the loss of edit permissions.

How to Edit a River Page

First, you must be a logged-in, registered user of the American Whitewater site to edit streams.

Next, on any stream page, click the pencil icon above the tab menu. You will now see edit links below sections of the river page that enable editing of those sections. You may now:

  • Click “Edit Name” in the upper right of the page to edit the river name, section name (from one identifiable geographic landmark to another), and alternate river name (the common name for a run used by paddlers).
  • Click “Change Featured Image” to change the title photo, or “Add Featured Image” to select one from the gallery.
  • Click “Edit Reach Geometry” to edit the line depicting the river reach. Note that if you extend the reach upstream, the system will not automatically recalculate distances from the put-in for features, and you will need to edit each feature individually.
  • Click “Edit” on the Beta Box to edit difficulty, gradient (we plan to automate this), river permit URL, and river permit information.
  • Navigate to the River Description box to edit its content. If you are writing a new narrative description and investing significant time in your writing, it is a good idea to compose your text in an external document, save your work, and then copy and paste it into the description. This ensures you do not lose your work. A plain text editor is helpful for composing text to ensure you don’t introduce extraneous HTML when pasting back into the description.
  • Click “Add River Feature” to add a rapid, access site (put-ins and take-outs at the start and end of the run can be distinguished), hazard, portage, waterfall, or other feature. You can position the feature on the reach by enabling “Snap to Reach,” which automatically calculates mileage and populates latitude and longitude coordinates. Set the difficulty (for rapids), select the feature type under characteristics, and add a description. Clicking “Edit” on any existing river feature allows you to modify any associated attributes. As with reach descriptions, we recommend saving your work externally if you are spending significant time writing detailed rapid descriptions.
  • Put-ins and take-outs should generally be located where you park your vehicle or unload boats. To do this, uncheck “Snap to Reach” and position the pin at the point you drive to. If the run requires a hike, place the put-in and take-out pins at the trailhead where you park, and feel free to add another “Other” point for where you enter or exit the river itself. Select Put-In, Take-Out, or Access Area for these sites. This is important for driving directions to work correctly, so make sure the access point is positioned on the correct side of the river.

We recommend watching these short tutorials:

How to Edit Flow Information on a River Page

In editing mode, click on the Flow tab to add a gauge and flow preferences, edit an existing gauge, or add a narrative gauge description. For a new gauge, click “Edit Gauges” and then “+ Add Gauge.” Start typing the name of the gauge in the Gauge Name field, select the appropriate gauge from the dropdown menu, then click “OK.”

Next, add the range of preferred flows. Click “Edit” to add the color-coded high, medium, and low recommended flow ranges. You can also change the difficulty rating based on flow (except for medium) and add a comment for each range. For existing gauges, you can click “Edit” or “Remove” to modify existing flow information. Although you can add multiple gauges for a run, we have generally found that the site functions more reliably when there is one gauge associated with a reach.

You can also edit the gauge correlation description. This is a place to provide narrative text explaining how to interpret flows (for example: the reference gauge is downstream of the run; when freezing levels are low the river will be flowing somewhat lower than the value shown, and during peak snowmelt the river may be flowing higher). [note: this field is currently not visible but we are working on it]

How to Create a New River Page

If you would like to add a new river page, you can fill out the River Reach Creation Form to create a new reach. Please let us know when you submit a reach by sending an email to info@americanwhitewater.org
. If you live in a region where several reaches need to be added and want to take on a project to build out the database, let us know and we can set you up to do it yourself.

If you are building out a river page that has just been added to the database, or is generally lacking content, the following sequence of steps is helpful for populating a river page:

  • Ensure the reach vector depicting the river is correct. Alignment with the USGS hydro layer is important for GIS analysis and for general accuracy.
  • Write a narrative description of the river reach. If you are spending significant time writing, we recommend saving your work frequently and drafting in an external document that you copy and paste from. Doing this in a plain text editor can ensure that you don’t copy extraneous HTML into the description.
  • Add a river gauge and flow range. With thousands of gauges from several different providers, this is not always easy the first time, so ask for help with this step.
  • Add features. Start with the put-in and take-out as a minimum. You can also add rapids or other features. Be sure to select the class of feature from the Classification drop-down menu (for example: put-in, rapid, hazard, portage, waterfall, etc.). If the feature is a rapid, be sure to select difficulty. If the feature is on the river (such as a rapid), you can select “Snap to Reach.” If the feature is off the river (such as parking for the put-in located away from the channel), you can snap it to the reach vector to get the mileage, then unselect “Snap to Reach” and move it to the appropriate off-river location. Note that intermediate access points between the put-in and take-out can be added as “Access” features.
  • Once these steps are complete and the river reach is built out, you can begin adding photos. Images are added through the Trip Report interface. If you have been on the river, you can upload sets of photos from different trips by date. If you are unsure of the date for your photos or just want to add a set of images quickly for primary rapids, you can place them in one report. If you set the date to 1900-01-01 they will display as “date unavailable.” You can also encourage friends and fellow paddlers to submit trip reports with photos. The Trip Report feature works well on both desktop and mobile. Once photos are in the gallery, you can use them to select images for features or add a featured image to the river description.

Note that the website uses responsive design, and photos associated with a feature may appear in different aspect ratios depending on the device being used to view the site. In some cases, images may be cropped to 16:9, 4:3, or 1:1. It is best to use images for features where the subject is centered and remains visible under different cropping or aspect ratios. Landscape (horizontal) images generally work better than portrait (vertical) images.

If you have questions, just ask on the StreamTeam Forum at Google Groups.

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