The San Juan River Basin Fluvial Restoration Database and the Conservation Registry (California)

Information about the implementation and ecological outcomes of most fluvial restoration projects carried out in the United States is either nonexistent or not readily available, yet sharing this information is critical for advancing fluvial restoration. Electronic Web-based databases are an ideal platform, as they can be designed to cross jurisdictions and are easy to access. Here, we describe the creation of the San Juan River basin Fluvial Restoration Projects Database (SJRB-FRPD), with an emphasis on how we used the Conservation Registry database (conservationregistry.org) as the platform to make fluvial restoration project records available online.

With support from the Bureau of Reclamation, the SJRB-FRPD was launched by the Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CPCESU) as part of its mission to aid managers in restoring watersheds in the region. Along with its main tributaries, the Animas, Los Pinos, La Plata, Piedra, and Mancos Rivers, the San Juan River rises in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and stretches for about 640 km before draining into the Colorado River. It encompasses portions of southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, and northwest New Mexico and crosses multiple federal, state, local, and private jurisdictions. We recorded 168 fluvial restoration projects implemented within the SJEB from 2003 to 2008.

Our main goal for creating this database was to provide SJRB restoration practitioners with a way to track fluvial restoration projects across jurisdictions and, by that, promote coordination and communication throughout the basin. We realized that the information we collected must be easily available online with a straightforward interface for entering and searching for information. After some research, it became clear that creating such an online application on our own would be expensive and time consuming, so instead we employed the Conservation Registry.

The Conservation Registry is a national database created through a partnership between federal, state, and private organizations with leadership from Defenders of Wildlife. One of its goals is to provide a platform for organizations and individuals to track conservation project records online. Participation in the Conservation Registry occurs through either a portal or a free user account. A portal is a separate but connected website that enjoys all the features built into the larger database. The home page and mapping tool are customized according to the needs of the portal holder, and only the project records created through the portal website are available.

For organizations or individuals who cannot afford the initial $5,000 and yearly $300 fees for obtaining a portal and who are still interested in using the Conservation Registry platform, the user account function is a viable alternative. The free user account is created by providing limited personal information and provides access to an online interface where users can enter, delete, or edit project records at their discretion. This interface also allows downloading of all the project records entered through the given user account in Excel or shape-file formats. An individual or organization using this option can regard their user account as their own database and provide access to whomever they want. This means that users must log onto the national Conservation Registry webpage and sign into the appropriate account to view the project records entered through that user account.

We negotiated the creation of the CPCESU Portal to the Conservation Registry (cpcesu.conservationregistry. org), as we wanted to have a separate Web site that had a filter presenting only the relevant projects (Figure 1). The user account option, though free, would have required our users to work through the national database and perform some searches to retrieve our project records. Also, we were informed by the Conservation Registry administrators that by the end of August 2010, it will be possible to create multiple user accounts through a portal. At that point, we plan on encouraging practitioners, managers, and planners from all over the Colorado Plateau to create user accounts directly in the CPCESU Portal to enter project records. This will allow us to have a functioning and up-to-date online database that enjoys the features and enhancements provided by the...