TADA_ViewATTAINS: Only catchments with associated Assessment Units are available from the ATTAINS

[cristinamullin]

Hillary: I really like the appearance of the features in the map. It is easy to identify the lines/polygons/points vs the catchment outlines relative to the MonitoringLocations. I am wondering if long term it would make sense to pull catchment outlines from a source other than ATTAINS because my understanding is that only catchments with associated Assessment Units are available from the ATTAINS webservices. Being able to see catchment outlines in areas where an org has not yet created an assessment unit (but has new MonitoringLocations) might be very useful when making determinations about which MonitoringLocations should be included within new assessment units.

Cristina: I agree - "Being able to see catchment outlines in areas where an org has not yet created an assessment unit (but has new MonitoringLocations) might be very useful when making determinations about which MonitoringLocations should be included within new assessment units.".

I'll write up a separate issue to capture this, and we can discuss details with the team (e.g. what additional sources for catchment we would want to use and how they match up/don't match up with the catchments ATTAINS uses) as a potential future improvement. For example, I believe the ATTAINS catchments are a mix of NHD high res catchments and hexagons for some oceans/lakes/estuaries. I am not sure how that will mesh visually with if we bring in a different catchment layer for the areas that the ATTAINS catchment layer does not cover.

Katie: I'm definitely on board with these recommendations. And I believe you are right Cristina; that the catchments that ATTAINS uses are a combination of NHD-HR catchments as well as hexagons. I have written up some code in the past to "munge" the two types for another project I worked on (https://geocentroid.shinyapps.io/NPCA_Water_Quality_Visualizer/). I think that some of this code could help address some of the visualization issues you bring up!

Jesse: Note: I do not believe we have a service to pull the EPA snapshot of the NHDPlus HR we use for ATTAINS yet. This is something that will be available in WATERS when they move more toward the NHDPlus HR.