Data Exchange
The Riverscapes Data Exchange is the Riverscapes Consortium's cloud platform for discovering, sharing, and downloading riverscapes data. It is a searchable catalog of over 115,000 projects — spanning watershed-scale model outputs, reach-scale studies, and custom datasets — all organized consistently, openly licensed, and ready to explore in a browser or download directly into your GIS.
Every project in the Data Exchange is Riverscapes-compliant: structured, documented with machine-readable metadata, and displayable with consistent cartography in the Riverscapes Viewers. The Data Exchange is the central hub that connects Riverscapes tools, data, and users.
Open the Riverscapes Data Exchange
Search, browse, and download riverscapes data. Free to access. No account required to discover public data.
What's Already in There
The Data Exchange is not an empty repository waiting to be filled — it already holds a massive, freely accessible body of riverscapes data produced by the Consortium and its partners:
- 115,000+ projects covering virtually every HUC10 watershed in the conterminous United States
- 10+ model types per watershed: RSContext, VBET, BRAT, RCAT, TauDEM, Anthro, Metric Engine, and more
- 54 million riverscapes with ~150 metrics each, queryable via the Riverscapes Reports platform
- Projects from multiple successive national model runs (2021, 2023, and 2025), allowing temporal comparison
- Custom studies and datasets contributed by partner agencies, universities, and individual researchers worldwide
This is the third consecutive continental-scale production run. All previous runs are also retained in the Data Exchange as archived projects. Learn more about the 2025 CONUS run →
What Is a Riverscapes Project?
Everything in the Data Exchange is stored as a Riverscapes project — a structured folder of data files accompanied by a plain-text project.rs.xml metadata file. This file is the key to the whole system: it tells the Data Exchange what type of project it is, what data it contains, where the files are, how they relate to each other, and who produced them.
Because every project follows this standard, the Data Exchange can:
- Display any project in a web map viewer embedded directly on the project page
- Apply curated cartography automatically when the project is opened in QGIS or ArcGIS via the Riverscapes Viewer
- Track provenance, version history, and QA/QC status
- Make projects searchable by type, geography, metadata, tags, and owner
Projects can contain GeoPackages, rasters, reports, logs, CSVs, images — practically any file format. The smallest projects are a handful of files for a few kilometres of stream; the largest are multi-gigabyte national model outputs.
Finding and Downloading Data
Searching the Catalog
The Data Exchange has a powerful search interface. You can filter projects by:
- Project type — e.g., all VBET projects, all BRAT projects
- Geography — draw or zoom to an area on the interactive map
- HUC code — search by watershed identifier
- Tags — filter by production run, agency, or theme (e.g.
2025CONUS,BLM) - Metadata — query by any key/value pair stored in the project
- Owner — find all projects belonging to a specific organization or user
Search results can be viewed as a map, a card grid, or a table. The table view supports copying a list of project IDs for batch operations.
Downloading
Public projects can be downloaded by anyone. Each project page has a Download button that packages the project as a zip file. For large projects (>1.5 GB) or selective downloads, use the QGIS Viewer downloader or the rscli command line interface, both of which download individual files and support regex-based file filtering.
For downloading many projects at once, see the Downloading Multiple Projects guide which covers everything from simple scripts to the full Python API.
Viewing in the Browser
Every project page embeds the Web Viewer — an interactive map where you can add up to five project layers, switch between curated views, and browse the project's metadata and layer provenance. No GIS software required. Learn more about the Web Viewer →
Sharing Your Own Data
Anyone with a Riverscapes account can upload data to the Data Exchange. The platform is designed for sharing at every scale — from a single reach study to thousands of model outputs.
Creating an Account
Create a free account at data.riverscapes.net using Google, Apple, or email. This same account works across the Riverscapes platform including PBR Explorer and Riverscapes Reports. Step-by-step signup instructions →
Uploading Projects
Once your data is packaged as a Riverscapes-compliant project you can upload it via:
- The QGIS Viewer uploader — a point-and-click interface within QGIS for new uploads and updates
- The rscli command line interface — for scripted or bulk uploads
When uploading you assign an owner (yourself or an organization) and set visibility:
| Visibility | Who can discover it | Who can download it |
|---|---|---|
| Public | Everyone | Everyone |
| Private | Everyone | Owner + authorized users |
| Secret | Owner + authorized users only | Owner + authorized users |
You can change visibility at any time. Full permissions reference →
Organizations
Projects can be owned by organizations rather than individual accounts, making them easier to manage in teams and collaborations. Organization members are assigned one of four roles — Viewer, Contributor, Administrator, or Owner — each with progressively broader permissions over projects and membership. Learn about organizations →
Attribution
Every project has a single administrative owner, but riverscapes work is often collaborative. The attributions feature lets you credit partner organizations in named roles: Funder, Co-Funder, Analyst, Contributor, Designer, QA/QC, Supporter. Attributed projects appear on each partner organization's page, giving credit where it belongs. Learn about attribution →
Archiving
Projects that are no longer actively used can be archived to reduce storage costs. Archived projects retain their metadata and remain discoverable in search, but their data files are moved to deep storage and the web map tiles and download ZIP are removed. Projects can be restored at any time (up to 48 hours to complete). Learn about archiving →
Getting Data In: New Project Types
If you want to contribute data of a type that isn't already in the Data Exchange, the process involves three steps:
- Define the project type — a machine code, name, description, and website for the new data type. Contact support@riverscapes.freshdesk.com to register it.
- Prepare your data — organize files into a logical folder structure, write the
project.rs.xmlmanifest, define project bounds. - Develop business logic and symbology — XML and style files that tell the Riverscapes Viewers how to display your project type. These live in the open-source RiverscapesXML repository.
The RSXML Python package can generate valid project.rs.xml files programmatically. The Project Getting Started guide walks through each step in detail.
Programmatic Access
The Data Exchange has a full GraphQL API and a Python client library, making it straightforward to search across thousands of projects, download files selectively, and integrate riverscapes data into analysis pipelines.
GraphQL API
Query the Data Exchange from any language. Search projects by type, geography, tags, metadata, and more. Self-documenting via Postman or Insomnia.
Python API (pydex)
A Python client library for searching, iterating, and downloading from the Data Exchange. Handles auth, pagination, and incremental file downloads automatically.
rscli
Command line interface for uploading and downloading individual projects. The simplest entry point if you don't need to write code.
- Browsing and occasional downloads → use the Data Exchange website
- Downloading a handful of known projects → use rscli or the QGIS Viewer downloader
- Bulk downloads or data pipelines → use the Python API
- Custom queries from non-Python languages → use the GraphQL API directly
Data Quality and Provenance
Every project in the Data Exchange carries provenance metadata recorded in its project.rs.xml file: what tool produced it, which version, who ran it, when, and how. For projects produced by Cybercastor, automated QAQC checks are recorded as part of the project's history.
Projects are tagged with an overall status that tracks where they sit in the data lifecycle:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Exploratory | Preliminary output, not yet reviewed |
| Provisional | Has undergone some automated or manual QA/QC |
| Final | Validated and trusted; DOI assigned for citation |
| Promoted | Fully vetted for external consumption (e.g. used in a published paper or management plan) |
This system makes it clear to data consumers what level of confidence to place in any given dataset. Full data quality standards →
The Data Exchange in the Riverscapes Ecosystem
The Data Exchange is the connective tissue of the Riverscapes platform. Data flows into it from Cybercastor model runs, is explored via the Riverscapes Viewers, extracted via Riverscapes Reports, and accessed programmatically via the API:
Cybercastor
The cloud engine that produced the 115,000+ projects in the Data Exchange. Pulls inputs from the Data Exchange, runs models at scale, and deposits outputs back automatically.
Riverscapes Viewer
Free web, QGIS, and ArcGIS apps for exploring Data Exchange projects with automatic curated symbology. The Web Viewer is embedded directly in every project page.
Riverscapes Reports
Draw an area of interest and immediately extract metrics and reports from 54 million riverscapes — all sourced from Data Exchange projects.
Riverscapes Network Models
The production-grade geospatial models whose outputs populate the Data Exchange. Each model produces a Riverscapes-compliant project for every watershed it runs.