Stream Temperature additional layers:

[jenniferRapp]

Consider updating the 'terrain' to cover the whole of North America like is shown in the Water Storage mapper. I think it would help emphasize the display. Exaggerate the terrain with more of a hillshade effect if possible. Compared to the Water Storage I think it looks a little blurry. Is that the rivers over top?

I also noticed that the terrain does cover all NA, but there is a light yellow layer that is opaque covering much of Canada. Does this serve a purpose? I noticed that Mexico is shown, but you almost cannot see it because the ocean blue and the light yellow layer are very faint.

Have you tried a darker background with this visualization that might highlight the light gray- white rivers?

[mhines-usgs]

one thing quickly i'll look at, I was adjusting the layer order and i think i put the terrain under the countries layer, so i can adjust that.

as the makerspace team, we had hashed through background and stream segment color options before on previous tickets that are now closed, i can link to those past tickets for water temp when i get a chance later, but i personally would be hesitant to restart all those conversations again, because when we change that, every other layer needs to be considered again too (roads, state, county outlines, etc)

[jenniferRapp]

I hear you. I don't think we should make big changes to color prior to review. I do appreciate you looking at the order so that the rest of Canada and Mexico are visible like they are in Water Storage.

[mhines-usgs]

that change is up on test and should get out to beta soon too.

[jenniferRapp]

I'm going to highjack this issue for a similar but different topic. Pat would like to have large river names on the map. We discussed adding the names of Rivers or a separate layer that could be turned on/off so that users could navigate the country better.

Thoughts about how we might do this?
@mhines-usgs @mwernimont

[mwernimont]

I'll double check if our open layers tiles have the stream names in them. If they do this would be pretty easy, if we don't currently have the stream names, more work obviously.

[mhines-usgs]

We could always create our own geojson layer with the titles we wanted to include if filtering the open layers tiles ends up being messy, just another idea..

[mwernimont]

Yeah, thats what I meant by the more work. lol. But rather just use existing resources if we can!

[mhines-usgs]

another fallback, I do also have a few local shapefile of major rivers we could convert to GeoJSON and use. here is what they look like

'MajorRivers.shp'

U.S.Rivers from ESRI

[jenniferRapp]

Thanks so much for taking this on. I'm sorry it is a late request. I think the uS Rivers from ESRI looks pretty good. If Marty finds tiles that are already labeled and public we can use them too...

[mwernimont]

So openmaptiles does have the names and I can get them to display, but you can't get that tileset aspect to kick in until after zoom level 8, which is our cap. So @mhines-usgs if you think you got this would say go for it. 👍

[mhines-usgs]

sure, it'll be later today though, have to wrap up some work for MEA and GCMRC until then, then can tackle this!

[jenniferRapp]

So are we using Marty's tiles or Megan's? Should we just increase the zoom level?

[mhines-usgs]

i'm not sure we want to add more zooms, but we can. just have to update a bunch of the other tilesets if so. i'm happy to make the river names on a new layer, that way we can keep more control of the display.

[mwernimont]

We will use Megans. They already okayed this level of zoom, so why go through another round? And like Megan said we have the ability to make tiles easily and then we have full control over them.

[mhines-usgs]

I took a stab at this but I would want to spend a little more time on it to improve it slightly because it's not quite what I wanted. (Or if Marty beats me to it, I welcome you to play with it, too 🌅 🏃‍♂️ ⚡ )

I ended up converting the river line layer into geojson and putting on s3, and am using the mapbox 'symbol' type of symbol that lets you label a feature. (but no features are actually displayed, just the labels) This way it will scooch the label around and follow the user without having to manually place several copies of the label. This seems to be the 'way' to do this according to their documentation.

However I think the shapefile/geojson needs to be simplified slightly, it's kind of complex now, and then we might have more success with the labels always showing up. Right now I think that it might be struggling to label some of them based on squigglyness of the river + the text options and paint options I have set in the style. But anyway, at least we'll have a draft copy up on test and beta shortly.

[mhines-usgs]

Now that it's out on test, it actually seems to be labeling more how I wanted, so I guess just go check it out and let me know what you think when you have time.

[mhines-usgs]

you're looking for blue words with a white halo --

[jenniferRapp]

Megan, thank you for pushing to get this moving. I like the approach you took since it doesn't require making tons of label points.

As I dig through Rivers that I am familiar with, there are problems when we zoom in too far with this generalized National River layer. The labels are generalized too and sometimes that makes them wrong.
ex:
Potomac labels are not correct in the southern-most branch shown. That is Shenandoah, and the Potomac really only flows east west, not north south. It would be best represented by the VA /MD border and no where else.

Susquehanna didn't show up.

Ohio river doesn't flow that far North/east of the state of Ohio. That label works at a National scale, but once you get east of the eastern border of OH @ Pittsburg two other rivers come together to form the Ohio R. Allegheny is the label from Pittsburgh north east. The ohio label on the trib flowing from the south should be the Monongahela.

The Tennessee River west of Chattanooga looks like it ends bc we don't have reservoirs on the map. hmmm.

South Platte is not in the map but North Platte is. The Colorado R also has holes... (this shows up more when we zoom in farther).

One option/idea:
I'm wondering if we make the river layer visible, much wider than the model streams, (like a buffer) and label them at zoom level 2 or 3? Then the generalized lines will guide the user to the streams that they are familiar with... But what color? can it be underneath the modeled lines? Could it be a wide light teal color a little darker than you had the reservoirs?

Overall I think if we labeled at coarser scales it might be fine....
What if we try the blue that the river labels are in the Streamer app? https://txpub.usgs.gov/DSS/streamer/web/
Can we update the labels for portions of the layer? Should we look for a different layer? I thought the Streamer has a service (tiles if we are lucky) specifically for displaying rivers at a national scale. No way we could use their data? https://txpub.usgs.gov/DSS/streamer/mapServices/index.html#tab2?HydroBaseMapForImagery

I'm pretty open tomorrow so if you want to have a call to discuss, feel free to ping me.
Thank you!

[jenniferRapp]

@mwernimont @mhines-usgs Marty, Megan is pulled off in other directions today. Are you able to look at theses options today for the river labels?

[mwernimont]

I haven't looked into this yet, but off the top of my head:
Adding a thicker layer underneath the modeled streams is possible, but adding another color will really distract from what we are trying to represent here I believe. When trying to convey a specific message via color like we are here simplicity is the best option, the less color to look at the less chance of being confused.

I can look at the Texas streamer, but looks like they are an esri shop, which I don't have much background in. So can't promise anything there.

[jenniferRapp]

Makes sense, Marty. They are an ESRI shop, yes.

The thick layer is not likely to work, but some way to show the major rivers and show them would be nice. It's just difficult to get these various layers to overlay..

[mwernimont]

Will see if I can find some meta data for the tiles we have. If the streams are broken up into stream order we can do some fancy filtering to make some orders thicker. But we may not have done that as it wasn't on our radar of wants when we initially created this. Shall find out if I can!

[jenniferRapp]

no, It's OK Marty. I guess we need to determine if the names are going to work with the layer we added from Megan's National data. The Modelers thought there were names associated with the GF. I'd be intrigued to see if that was a source we could use.

[mwernimont]

@jenniferRapp @mhines-usgs I was able to get the Texas Streamer tiles into our app, but it seems to be a raster service which does not let me do much to their tiles. Colors, font size, clarity of images, and what is shown(waterways, waterway, city and state names) is basically in their hands as its images being served. I've only really gotten pngs to load, they do say svgs can be served which help in clarity, but not sure if its worth the effort to find out if we don't like that we can't filter out the extra stuff we don't want, as I believe we only wanted the water way names right?

[jenniferRapp]

@mwernimont Could this layer of streams with names be something that could be turned on and off as a layer? The user could turn it on and off to navigate better? or, can the names be displayed alone from the streamer app over top of the water temp streams?

[mwernimont]

@jenniferRapp
Could this layer of streams with names be something that could be turned on and off as a layer? - Yes

or, can the names be displayed alone from the streamer app over top of the water temp streams? - From what I can tell from their service no. They are serving raster images and whats in the image is what you get. I've been looking to see if they have just a service query for stream names, but I am not finding anything. I'm not an ersi expert though so things could be going over my head? So current answer is if we used this layer it would be state names, river and streams, city names, and river and stream names.

So in their service they have dynamic layers as false, which from reading is the ability in esri for clients to dynamically change layer appearance and behavior in your map service. Determining which layers will appear in a map, layer symbology, layer order and position, labeling, and more, can be achieved through the use of dynamic layers. In this way, dynamic layers can increase the amount of interaction that users have with your maps. https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/server/latest/publish-services/windows/about-dynamic-layers.htm

Which leads me further into what they are serving is what you get and no real leeway to tweak things

[mhines-usgs]

I dug up the GF metadata for the POI layer in their release and put some details in the notes from our call earlier about the different fields and what they represent or provide. But even though it's interesting, I don't think there is anything there that will help us to filter the data though, unfortunately.

I also tried to join those POI data into the stream layer from ESRI to see what that looked like, using spatial location to select the details from the POI layer that the GIS matched it with, and it didn't give very good results, it seems, from my scanning, and many were unmatched.

[jenniferRapp]

Is the “NHDPlusID: attribute name from NHDPlus HR “ a name or an ID? If it linked us to the NHDPlus HR tables then we could connect with a bunch of attributes. Basically, I thinking that we either use the Streamer layer that makes the app very busy, or no stream names at all. What do you guys think? Jen Jennifer L. Rapp, Physical Scientist Chief, Decision Support Branch USGS Water Mission Area Richmond, VA 23228 804-615-6868 (mobile and home office) [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> From: Megan Hines <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 7, 2020 6:32 PM To: usgs-makerspace/makerspace-sandbox <[email protected]> Cc: Rapp, Jennifer L <[email protected]>; Mention <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [usgs-makerspace/makerspace-sandbox] Stream Temperature additional layers: (#667) This email has been received from outside of DOI - Use caution before clicking on links, opening attachments, or responding. I dug up the GF metadata for the POI layer in their release and put some details in the notes from our call earlier about the different fields and what they represent or provide. But even though it's interesting, I don't think there is anything there that will help us to filter the data though, unfortunately. I also tried to join those POI data into the stream layer from ESRI to see what that looked like, using spatial location to select the details from the POI layer that the GIS matched it with, and it didn't give very good results, it seems, from my scanning, and many were unmatched. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<https://gcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fusgs-makerspace%2Fmakerspace-sandbox%2Fissues%2F667%23issuecomment-740245300&data=04%7C01%7Cjrapp%40usgs.gov%7C43971a280ad24c06c02b08d89b085e66%7C0693b5ba4b184d7b9341f32f400a5494%7C0%7C0%7C637429807548425115%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Di7TdJdcWv95lj6hIc9NFPUYJBrfuyvpDKVTjtpUy1Y%3D&reserved=0>, or unsubscribe<https://gcc02.safelinks.protectio%20n.outloo%20k.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fnotifications%2Funsubscribe-auth%2FAIBB4BMUOSNRJ6GLJQL2DKDSTVQWPANCNFSM4SJOXPGA&data=04%7C01%7Cjrapp%40usgs.gov%7Cf5b81a58b5134f63cd2a08d89b0846fc%7C0693b5ba4b184d7b9341f32f400a5494%7C0%7C0%7C637429807140318133%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Q3RuKJWQQEZM%2FwrWMa%2BooRtUSFM%2BX3BgHzf%2BJNgsdR4%3D&reserved=0>.

[mhines-usgs]

That's an ID

I think at this point we might want to just pass on the layer names, and possibly work on a solution we can include in the future. I don't think the Streamer solution is an attractive one but seems distracting. Maybe when there is less pressure from other projects we can create your vision for some kind of national level layer with river system names/hydro regions or something to add later on.

[jenniferRapp]

OK. @mhines-usgs @mwernimont @lindsayplatt

Let's hold of from adding any river names or additional layers to the app for now. Thank you very much for trying multiple avenues to solving this request. I think we can re-visit this in the New Year if we can identify a good source of river names or means to reduce the number from GF.

Jen