The primary purpose of the CHaMP Workbench is to help users work with the existing, pre-defined visits associated with the CHaMP program. The official set of visits is defined on the central CHaMP Monitoring database and then synchronized down the the local Workbench database.
However, it is possible to create visits that represent unofficial field surveys and store these in the local Workbench database and use the software’s features to manipulate them. These so called custom visits are stored in the local workbench database only and never uploaded or synchronized with the central CHaMP system.
Creating Custom Visits
- Click
Dataon the main menu and chooseCreate Custom Visit... - Provide a Visit ID. This must be unique and distinct from any other visit ID in the local Workbench database. Given that CHaMP periodically issues new visit IDs (they started at 1 and are up to ~ 5,500 for the 2018 field season) it is strongly advised that you pick a visit number that is easily distinguishable from those issued by the CHaMP program. The default is 9000 for this reason, but you could also choose a larger number still.
- Specify the field season (calendar year) in which the survey was collected.
- Pick one of the existing watersheds or enter the name of a custom watershed.
- Pick one of the existing sites or enter the name of a custom site where the visit took place.
- Pick a program. This designation is not critical and so you can choose any existing program as a placeholder.
- Select a protocol (this is optional).
- Specify the name of the organization that collected the survey.
- If you intend to calculate topographic metrics for the custom visit then you will need to specify the channel units for the visit. See below.