• Introduction
• Step 1
• Step 2
• Step 3
• Step 4
• Step 5
• Step 6
• Step 7

Steps 1 and 2 planned and scoped your Recovery Potential Screening (RPS) project. Step 3 transforms your plans into a custom RPS Tool ready to perform your watershed screening assessments. Although several different versions of RPS Tools exist, this step’s instructions assume that the reader is starting with a Statewide RPS Tool from one of the lower 48 states. These are the most commonly used RPS Tools, they contain a pre-loaded indicator dataset of over 200 parameters, and are often customized for specific projects. It will be helpful to open a Statewide RPS Tool for reference while you follow the instructions in Step 3.

The following actions will apply the progress made in Steps 1 and 2 to customizing your RPS Tool in Step 3:

Verify geographic area of project.  If you are using a pre-made RPS Tool, it is necessary to check on whether the project area chosen in Step 1 is completely covered in the Tool you have. Statewide RPS Tools contain every HUC12 watershed that is fully or partially within the state; for the partially in-state HUC12s, the whole watersheds are included in the data (not just the in-state portion).  

Verify watershed scale(s) of analysis.  Also in Step 1, you settled on a watershed scale or scales to use in your screening. If you chose to work at the HUC12 scale, that matches the existing watershed scale of the data and the mapping functions in the Statewide RPS Tools. If you need to work at multiple watershed scales or scales other than HUC12, you will need to use the Generic RPS Tool Template and add your own indicator data and watershed IDs for each watershed scale you plan to work with (up to three scales). Note also that, when using the Generic Tool, the mapping functions are not supported within the Tool itself and will need to be provided externally using Geographic Information Systems or other software.  All RPS index calculations, rank ordering and graphs are supported in the Generic RPS Tool.

Make sure watershed units match.  If you plan to use watershed indicator data embedded within the RPS Too, or data downloaded from Watershed Index Online (WSIO) or the EPA EnviroAtlas, all those data sources use the same version of the national HUC12 geospatial dataset as a common standard. This version is consistent with the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD) downloadable from the NHDPlus website. If you do have HUC12 data for other indicators that was generated outside of the named sources, and a different version of the HUC12 data was used to compile the indicators, the HUC12 IDs, names and total area should be checked against the HUC12s within your statewide tool (or against the Snapshot geospatial dataset) for consistency. Note that the official national download site for the Watershed Boundary Dataset managed by the US Geological Survey allows the data to be changed on an ongoing basis, which results in inconsistencies with previous versions when updates are submitted. 

Confirm all indicators data are available.  When you developed your menu of indicators in Step 2, you may have selected indicators (or compiled new ones) that are not included in the pre-compiled dataset that comes within each Statewide RPS Tool. It is necessary to cross-check your desired indicator menu with the indicators list (see the tab marked INDICATOR INFO) already within your Statewide RPS Tool. If necessary, follow the instructions for adding indicators (see the tab marked HUC12 DATA) to complete the dataset within your RPS Tool. 

Define watershed subsets of interest.  Many RPS projects do not necessarily screen and compare all the watersheds contained in their Tool, especially if focusing on a subset of watersheds provides a chance to compare fewer watersheds of higher relevance to the purpose for the screening. For example, an RPS project may only be interested in comparing watersheds with impaired waters, or only watersheds with greater than 5% urban land, or coldwater fisheries, or other characteristic of interest. Another type of watershed subset that is frequently of interest is the whole group of HUC12 watersheds within a larger river basin, such as a HUC8. Recalling your Step 1 process that defined your geographic area of interest and screening purpose, you can now apply that to identify the IDs subsets of watersheds that you are most interested in screening. A tab within the RPS Tool called SUBSETS is provided as a convenient place to paste in columns of watershed ID numbers for each subset of interest and name them. When the RPS Tool is in use, these columns of ID numbers can be copied and pasted in during setup for a screening run. Due to their interest in screening the smaller watersheds within each HUC8 as well as statewide, several states have used the SUBSETS tab to compile the HUC12 ID numbers for all their HUC8s in the state.

QA/QC your customized RPS Tool before use.  If you are using a pre-compiled Statewide RPS Tool without any modifications, its data and its functionality as a tool have already been quality-assured before finalization and you may move on to Step 4. If you customized in any of the ways above, however, this is an essential time to QA/QC your modified tool to ensure that you have not introduced errors. It is useful to double-check all of the elements of Step 3 above, and the following additional practices also help verify whether your customized RPS Tool is ready for use:

• File naming.  Because you have modified the RPS Tool from the version that you downloaded, it must be renamed. It is useful to use a naming convention that provides some indication of location, date created and screening purpose. You will be renaming this master file for each screening run that you wish to save, so consider an efficient naming process in advance.
• Completeness.  If you have added indicator data, check and be sure that each indicator has been added in the right category (Base, Ecological, Stressor, Social). Also, be sure to note whether these new indicator names and their definitions have been added to the INDICATOR INFO tab – adding the data alone doesn’t provide this important metadata.
• Availability.  If you have added indicators correctly, their names will appear in the drop-down menus on the SETUP tab in the correct category. If they do not appear there, they cannot be selected and used in a screening.  Verify that all indicators were properly uploaded and are available for use. Be absolutely sure that every added indicator appears under the correct category in the drop-down lists, or repeating the ADD INDICATORS process with the correct count in each category may be necessary.
• Do a test run.  Another essential step is to do a very quick screening with a random, meaningless indicator selection, just to test whether the basic functions of the Tool remain intact after your customizing. Select ‘add all watersheds’, then choose a few random indicators from each of the three indicator categories.  Select RUN SCREENING, and answer YES to any prompts if they arise. You should see “Project Successfully Created” soon.  Then check the tabs below and verify that you are seeing the following type of screening results:
  • SUMMARY SCORES tab:  lists of watersheds, index scores and rank-orders by index
  • BUBBLE PLOT:  a graph with pale blue circles of different sizes representing each watershed
  • HUC12 MAP: a simple map of the state with HUC12 watershed boundaries superimposed; these are color-coded based on the RPI score by default but can be customized for any parameter.