Project for a River

General
1

I’m wondering if I can create a project for a water body like a river and have it list things found in water body.

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One way would be to make a traditional project. That would mean you (or other users) would have to add their observations manually. In my area, there is a project for a couple of creeks that run through the city. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/keith-creek-and-kent-creek-ecosystem-and-wildlife-corridor

Presumably, you could map out the river and make a collection project, but I’m not sure how to do that.

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3

There are a number of options for creating KML file polygons but the easiest I know is that you can create one using Google’s My Maps feature and then export a KML file of the layer that includes your polygon.

Once you have that, you can create a place from the Places page, and then use that place in the filter for a collection project.

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I have thousands of observations so would like it automatic

5

That is probably waht I will have to do. I created a poject just using counties that the river runs through but thats not perfect.

6

You might be better off using the watershed than the river (or the counties as you’ve done), because a problem with thin linear features is that observations with an accuracy circle that extends outside the feature won’t be included in the collection project.

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For now I think I will stick with Counties. The problem is at the mouth of the River it runs into the Missouri River, so I am getting those observations as well.I like the idea of a watershed too but that might even be more difficult to create. I actually have 3 rivers that I want to be able to easily see the fauna for them. I think it would be nice to see fishes too.I did find an existing place called the James River Lowlands, but its is broader than I’d like. hmm. are watersheds listed as places. This is the James RIver, Vermillion River, and Big Sioux River in South Dakota although the James starts in North Dakota. All three run into the Missouri.

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8

In my area we have government organizations designated to conserve watersheds who have delineated all the watersheds in the province. I recall seeing a map of something similar in the US but I don’t recall where… it was years ago. But it’s possible that someone somewhere has already created precise polygons for the watersheds which you could request?

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9

In the US the USGS (United States Geologic Survey) has created watershed maps/delineations. They split these up into different ‘HUC’ levels. 1 and 2 being the larger watersheds, ex: mississippi or missouri rivers. What you will want is a huc 8 level watershed most likely. If you do some googling around you might even be able to find an already existing kml file for the boundaries.

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10

Thank you . this is good information.

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I’ll see what I can find

12

yes! you can also create .kml files using Google Earth or ArcGIS

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13

I ended up creating a river corridor, 1 mile each side of the river. I did it for 3 rivers in South Dakota. Pretty amazing what people find.

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14

You may want to reach out to the folks who run the annual Home River Bioblitzes: https://homeriverbioblitz.org/

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I felt like practicing with QGIS a bit so I tried making a kml for Big Sioux River
My workflow was the following:

  1. Use QuickOSM Plugin to search for Big Sioux River
  2. Reproject the WGS coordinate system to UTM NAD 14
  3. apply a buffer (50 m and 100 m)
  4. dissolve geometry
  5. simplify geometry (10m)[ because kml file got slightly bigger than 1mb at first]
  6. Export as kml

for big rivers the 50m buffer (_50) might be a bit small, that’s when 100m might be better. But overall they are just values I guessed would be plausible.

Let me know if that works as intended

I haven’t tried creating a place yet.

Edit: just saw that I missed the post that it was already solved. Well good practice for QGIS for me =)

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sounds great! I love the user-generated places, it’ll be a sad day when they limit it