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

• Only contribute information for which you have a high level of confidence in its accuracy. First hand 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 the policy.
  
• Remember that agency staff, elected representatives, lawyers, hydropower companies, landowners, river managers, Native American tribes, the press, search and rescue professionals, and all kinds of folks use the NWI. Contribute accordingly.
  
• Avoid using custom HTML and unique formatting. Our 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.

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

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

• Click on “Edit Name” on the upper right of the page to edit the river name, section name (from one identifiable geographic landmark to another), and alt river name (common name for a run used by paddlers).
  
• Click on “Change Featured Image” to change the title photo or “Add Featured Image” to select one from the gallery.
• Click on “Edit Reach Geometry” to edit the line depicting the river reach. Note that if you extend the reach upstream it will not automatically recalculate distance from the put-in for features and you will need to go and 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 content within it. If you are writing a new narrative description for a river reach and investing significant time in your writing, it's a good idea to compose your text in a document and save your work and then copy and paste it into the description. This ensures you don't loose your work.
  
• Click “Add River Feature” to add a rapid, access site (put-in and take-out 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 also automatically calculates mileage and populates the lat/lon coordinates, set the difficulty (for rapids), select the feature type under characteristics, and add a description. Clicking “edit” on any existing river feature will allow you to edit any of the attributes associated with that feature. Similar to writing the river reach description, we recommend saving your work if you are spending significant time writing up detailed rapid descriptions.
  
• The put-in and take-out should generally be where you park your vehicle or unload boats (i.e. position the pin on the reach vector to get the correct mileage and then uncheck the “snap to reach” box and move the pin to the point you drive to). This is important for driving directions to work (make sure you have the access point positioned on the correct side of the river).
  

We recommend watching these short tutorials on:

• How to make basic edits river pages: https://youtu.be/2CS2Hr5yQ9Q
• How to edit reach lines: https://youtu.be/igpI6QfYceQ
• How to add Trip Reports and multiple photos, and add photos to rapids: https://youtu.be/O_Z_qm6frik

Note: We are having ongoing permissions issues with editing gages and our developers are working to address them (as of 7/1/2024). You can send us an email if you are having trouble editing a gage and need help.

In editing mode click on the flow tab to add a gage and flow preferences, edit an existing gage, or add a narrative gage description. For a new gage click “Edit Flows” and then “Add New Gage.” start typing the name of the gage in the Gage Name field (using the same spelling and characters as the managing agency for the gage), select the appropriate gage from the dropdown menu, then click “Add Correlation Gage.” Note that we have thousands of gages in our system and it can be overwhelming. You generally want to choose the USGS gage if that is an option. The gage source will be indicated in parentheses to the right of the name. You may also see some state agency gages, NOAA gages, gages from individual providers like Dreamflows, and gages in the HADS system. Not all of these gages provide flow information. You generally don't want to use the “river” gages as these are used for reporting observed flows. Generally always use the USGS gage if you can and if you have questions about gages from other providers please reach out.

Next you have to add the range of preferred flows. Click on “New Range” to add the upper and lower bounds of the acceptable flow range (“Range of Boatable Flows, R0-R9”) which is the lowest (R0) and highest flow (R9) that use typically occurs. Some individuals may bump down a river at lower than acceptable flows and other may enjoy high challenge trips when a river is in flood that are higher than acceptable flows so this range should not reflect the lowest or highest flow the river has been boated but rather represents the range at which most would find an acceptable boating experience. If you want to add lower than acceptable ranges (L0-L9) or higher than acceptable ranges (H0-H9) you can define these by adding a “new range,” and you can also change the difficulty rating based on flow. For existing gages you can click on “Edit Gage” or “Delete Gage” to modify existing flow information. Although you can add multiple gages for a run, we have generally found that the site functions more reliably when there is one gage associated with a reach.

You can also edit the Gage Description. This is a place where you can provide narrative text that provides information on how to interpret flows (e.g. this reference gage is downstream of the run; when freezing level is low the river will be flowing a bit lower than the value given and during peak snowmelt the river may be flowing higher).

If you would like to add a new river page, you can fill out our form to create a new river reach: River Reach Creation Form. 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 you want to take it on as a project to build out the database, please let us know and we can get you set 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 with content:

• 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. Note that if you are spending significant time writing it, we recommended that you save your work frequently and consider drafting the content in an external document that you copy and paste from.
• Add a river gage and flow range. With thousands of gages from several different providers this is not easy to figure out 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 (e.g. put-in, rapid, hazard, portage, waterfall, etc.). If it is a rapid be sure to select difficulty. If the feature is on the river (e.g. a rapid) you can select the “Snap to Reach” option. If the feature is off the river (parking for the put-in a half mile away) you can snap it to the reach vector to get the mileage and then unselect “Snap to Reach” to move it to the appropriate location off the river. Note that intermediate access points (between the put-in and take-out l) can be added as “Access” features.
• Once you have completed these steps and have the river reach built out you can start adding photos. You add images through the Trip Report interface. If you have been on the river you can upload sets of photos for different trips you may have taken by date. If you are not sure of the date for your photos or just want to get a bunch of images up quickly of the primary rapids you can put them in one report–if you set the date at 1900-01-01 they will display as “date unavailable.” You can also recruit friends and fellow paddlers to submit their reports with photos. The Trip Report feature works well on either desktop or mobile. Once you have photos in the gallery you can use them to Select an Image for features or Add a Featured Image to the river description. Note that our website has responsive design and photos associated with a feature will appear in different aspect ratios depending on pixel dimensions of the device an individual is using to view the website (in some cases they 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 is visible regardless of the cropping or aspect ratio. Landscape formatted (horizontal) images generally work better than portrait format (vertical).

Known Issues
We have made several major upgrades to our website over the past couple years that include redesigned river pages, interactive river maps, and a new integrated system for membership. We still have some known issues with river pages and our development team composed of volunteers and contractors are working on these. An overview of what you can and can't do now is below (late updated 8/1/2024).

Content Contributors Can
Edit Reach Descriptions (Safari remains annoying)
Edit River/Reach Name
Edit Most Beta Box Content
Add & Edit Rapid/Access and other Point location and descriptions
Add & Edit reach geometry, the lines depicting river segments
Add Alerts
Select photos from the Gallery for rapids or other features
Select a photo for the Featured Image for the run
Add Trip Reports
Upload multiple photos via Trip Reports

Content Contributors May Have Trouble
Adding a new gage
Editing flow ranges
Editing Gage Summary or Description

If you have questions, Click here to go to the StreamTeam Forum at Google Groups