Hydrography & Gallery¶

Two panels in the Tool Ribbon provide access to global hydrography reference data and a three-tab Gallery where you can save, organise, and import reusable map artifacts.

Hydrography Panel 🌊¶

Click the 🌊 icon to open the Hydrography panel. All layers are fetched via the MCP server and pushed through the gRPC stream — they appear on the map without reloading the page.

Available layers¶

MERIT-Hydro¶

MERIT-Hydro is a global, multi-directionally conditioned flow network derived from the MERIT DEM (90 m). The river network covers latitudes from ~60°S to ~84°N and is the recommended reference for delineation workflows.

Loaded MERIT layers arrive as vector line features. Each reach carries upstream area (uparea_km2), flow direction, and Pfafstetter codes — click a reach in the Feature Inspector to read these attributes.

WBD (Watershed Boundary Dataset)¶

The USGS WBD covers the contiguous US, Alaska, Hawaii, and US territories. Boundaries are loaded at the HUC level appropriate for the current zoom:

Click any HUC polygon in the Feature Inspector to see its HUC code, name, and area.

USGS Gauges¶

Loaded gauge layers are point features. Each gauge carries the USGS site number, station name, and datum — click a gauge point to read these, then use the site number in fetch_streamflow_data(gauge_id=...) to pull the discharge record.

Gallery 🧭¶

Click the 🧭 icon to open the Gallery panel. It has three tabs:

Mine — Your Personal Gallery¶

My Gallery is a personal, offline store backed by localStorage. Everything in it persists across sessions and survives map refreshes.

Artifact types you can save¶

Saving a map scene¶

1. Open the Gallery and make sure you are on the Mine tab.
2. Click + Save scene.
3. A form expands with three fields:
4. Title — pre-filled with today's date; edit to something meaningful (e.g., "TWI Basin Pre-calibration").
5. Description — optional free-text notes.
6. Tags — comma-separated keywords (e.g., basin, twi, pre-cal). Live tag chips appear as you type.
7. Click Save. The scene is stored immediately and appears at the top of the list.

A saved map scene captures: basemap, camera position (longitude, latitude, zoom, bearing, pitch), visible layer IDs, and layer opacities. It does not capture layer data — layers must be loaded when you restore the scene.

Saving a transect collection¶

From the Transects panel (Tool Ribbon → transect icon):

1. Optionally select a collection tab to scope the save to that collection only. If "All" is active, every transect is saved.
2. Click 📌 Save to My Gallery in the panel footer.
3. A form expands — fill in title, description, and tags, then click Save.

The save stores the full transect geometries, profile metadata, colors, and collection membership.

Saving an annotation collection¶

Identical flow — open the Annotations panel, click 📌 Save to My Gallery, fill the form.

Managing saved items¶

Each card in the Mine list shows:

• Type icon and title
• Content summary (e.g., "ESRI Imagery · 4 layers · zoom 11.2" for a scene, "5 transects · 2 collections" for a transect set)
• Tags and relative timestamp

Click a card to expand it and reveal action buttons:

Import feedback — after importing, a status message appears at the bottom of the panel:

• "Restored 'My Basin' — 4 layers (2 not yet loaded — add them first)" — for scenes where some saved layers are not currently loaded
• "Added 3 transects · 1 already existed" — for transect imports; skips duplicates silently by ID
• "All 5 annotations from 'X' already on map" — if every annotation is already present

Imported transects and annotations are merged into your current set and immediately saved to localStorage — they persist across refreshes.

Filtering and search¶

• The type dropdown filters to a specific artifact type (All types / Map scene / Transect collection / Annotation collection / …).
• The search box matches against title, description, and tags.

Starred — Bookmarked Community Items¶

The Starred tab shows community catalog items you have bookmarked. Bookmarks are stored locally alongside your gallery and do not require an account.

To bookmark a community item, go to the Community tab, expand a card, and click the ☆ star in the card header. It turns filled (★) and the item appears in Starred.

Clicking ↩ Import to map on a starred community card goes through the same import pipeline as the Community tab.

Community — Published Catalog¶

The Community tab fetches the AI-Hydro Gallery catalog (hosted on GitHub Pages). It loads once per session; if the network is unavailable it falls back to a built-in snapshot.

Artifact types¶

Trust levels¶

Filtering and sorting¶

Use the three dropdowns above the list to filter by type, trust level, and sort order (Recommended / Most imports / Most starred / Newest / Name). The search box filters across title, description, author, and tags.

Importing a community artifact¶

Click any card to expand it, then click ↩ Import to map. The artifact goes through source, provenance, licence, and readiness checks. A toast confirms success or reports any validation errors.

Stars vs bookmarks¶

Each community card has two interaction targets:

Contributing¶

At the bottom of the Community tab is a link to open the GitHub contribution template. You can share scenes, styles, datasets, case studies, or plate templates with the community by submitting a pull request.

Location Search 🔍¶

Click the 🔍 icon to open the search bar. Type a place name, address, or geographic feature to geocode and fly to it.

• Results appear as you type using Nominatim / OpenStreetMap geocoding
• The current map viewport is used as a geographic bias so results near the active basin rank higher
• Clicking a result flies to the location and drops a pulsing pin marker on the map

The search pin is temporary and clears when you click elsewhere on the map.

Tips¶

• Name scenes after workflow milestones — "Pre-calibration view", "Post-delineation", "Peer review snapshot". Restore them later without reconfiguring layer visibility or zoom.
• Load MERIT rivers (region) first to visually confirm channel locations before placing a transect or annotation on a reach.
• Use HUC at point after clicking a location in the Feature Inspector — it fetches the containing HUC boundary and adds it as a polygon layer in one step.
• Gauges in view returns all active USGS gauges — note the site numbers, then use them with fetch_streamflow_data to pull decades of discharge data in a single agent request.
• When restoring a scene that references layers not yet loaded, the status message tells you exactly how many are missing — load those layers first, then restore again.
• Use tags to group saves across types: tag a transect set, an annotation collection, and a scene all as "fieldwork-june" so they are findable together via the search box.
• The Research Gallery's map_plate_template artifacts let you apply a pre-styled layout (fonts, DPI, element positions) to a new study area without reconfiguring the composer from scratch.