On-Line Web Site Production Workshop Background

Gary Grimm and Katy Flanagan of Mountain Visions have been involved in North American Cooperative Community networking and natural resource multimedia projects for more than three decades. See Mountain Visions web site for more information.

Starting in 1996, with funding from the Department of Interior and Bureau of Land management, Mountain Visions produced an interactive CD-ROM titled “The Aurora Project – Community Watershed Partnerships.” This was completed in 1998. Dr. Jack E. Williams, Senior Aquatic Ecologist, Bureau of Land Management, was a co-producer of the Aurora Project and afterward was assigned to the National Forest Service.

The Aurora Project included a “Behind the Scenes” multimedia workshop about how the project was produced.

In the spring of 2000, Steve Robertson, Coordinator for the Upper Sevier River Watershed Community Project and Mary Wagner, Supervisior of the Dixie National Forest arranged a meeting with Mountain Visions, Jack Williams and Jim Sedell, Washington Office Forest Service, to discuss a proposal to begin the production of Interactive Watershed web sites for the existing nationwide Large Scale-Community Based Watershed Projects.

A proposal for a challenge grant to support a demonstration of this project was prepared for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). The National Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils (NARC&DC) agreed to support and administer this grant, which was to produce the first 5 Interactive Watershed projects.

Storm in John's Valley.

Several watershed groups around the U.S. expressed interest in this project. The Upper Sevier Watershed Community Project in Utah was the first to commit to the project. Steve Robertson, of the Dixie National Forest, and other watershed partners were instrumental in helping develop the grant proposal and the administrative support from NFWF and NARC&DC.

In addition, early funding was committed from the Upper Sevier watershed, during the year 2000, to produce a community based web site as stated in the proposal, even if national funding from NFWF was not approved. Utah State University and the Bureau of Land Managament helped administer this first project. With this support, the development of the Interactive Watershed template design was started. Other community based watershed groups who had expressed interest in being involved in the project gave input and approval for this template and it was introduced first for the Upper Sevier web site pages during the summer of 2001.

Meanwhile funding from NFWF was approved and Mountain Visions began to produce the first five Interactive Watershed web sites which had been proposed. The Conasauga River Watershed in Georgia and the Potomac River Watershed in Maryland and Virginia committed initial funds for the project in 2001. During the year 2002, the Pit River Watershed in California and the Upper Platte River Watershed in Colorado committed matching funds and “in kind” work efforts to match the available NFWF matching grant funds.

A portion of the budget was earmarked for Mountain Visions to visit each watershed and produce original photographic still images, 360 degree panorama photographs, and audio/video sequences. One purpose was to demonstrate how low cost, portable, and easy to use camera equipment could be used to document watershed restoration projects. In addition, Mountain Visions provided one day on site workshops in watershed community centers during these visits.

The Upper Sevier Watershed continued to exhibit a commitment to the whole project, by supporting the other watershed efforts whenever possible. It was with their help that Mountain Visions was able to produce a work procedure for a timely flow of information from the watershed community to be placed on the various pages of all of the web sites. An attempt to establish this same flow was made with each of the other watersheds. The success of this effort varied with each watershed depending on the time availability of watershed group members.

To expedite the flow of information, The Upper Sevier contracted with Vicki Tyler to do research on all of the resource issues, talk to resource personnel, and write most of the text for the main pages and information stories on the site. The other watersheds would have benefited greatly by finding someone like Vicki to help provide organized and timely information to Mountain Visions.

As of the end of the 2002 year, each of the 5 web sites have been developed fully as outlined in the NFWF grant proposal. The available funds for initiating these interactive community watershed sites has been expended. And, as proposed, these sites are now useful web sites that invite watershed community participation in the future. The ongoing production of updated and new material should be continuous into the future if more and more people use the site to become involved in watershed restoration efforts, and if some of these people also contribute images, stories and multimedia projects for the web sites.

To realize the most out of these Interactive Watershed web sites, each watershed group must promote the availability and usefulness of the sites to many different watershed user groups. As more people become involved in watershed restoration efforts because of interest in the web site, it will be important to adequately supply the effort with funds and personnel to keep it updated. It will become a useful information tool with many applications. It will also be very useful for fundraising for future restoration efforts.

Epilog: As of the beginning of the year 2003, all 5 watershed groups have asked Mountain Visions to continue to host the web sites and to help maintain the expected flow of updated information to various pages on the sites in the near future. Possibly this relationship will continue for several months or even a year or several years. At this time, we are developing a plan for this that will be based on the same funding, time commitment and web site hosting variables for each watershed. One of the ways we can help each watershed group keep these costs at a low level is to explain what and how material should be developed before it is sent to Mountain Visions for placement on an existing or a new web page on the site.

We hope the explanatory material contained in this on line workshop will aid in this communication.

Gary O. Grimm and Katy Flanagan
Mountain Visions