Terms
of Use.

Agreement and eligibility

These Terms of Use apply when you visit rivistry.org, use the Rivistry mobile app, create an account, browse public river information, ask questions, or submit community content. By using Rivistry, you agree to these terms and the Privacy Policy.

Rivistry is intended for a general audience. You may use it only if you can legally agree to these terms. If you are under the age required to agree to a contract where you live, use Rivistry with a parent or guardian’s involvement.

What Rivistry provides

Rivistry organizes public river-monitoring information, educational explanations, maps, river pages, Weekly Updates, and reviewed community observations. We may change, suspend, or discontinue a feature, source, or part of the service without guaranteeing that older content will remain available.

Rivistry does not replace the original monitoring agency, a laboratory, a qualified scientist, a physician, an environmental professional, or an emergency authority.

Safety and emergency disclaimer

Rivistry does not determine whether water is safe for swimming, boating, drinking, fishing, or any other activity. Measurements, maps, photos, AI suggestions, and community reports may be incomplete, delayed, estimated, incorrectly labeled, or no longer current.

Always follow official advisories, posted signs, weather alerts, emergency instructions, and guidance from public-health or environmental authorities. Do not enter unsafe areas or water to collect an observation. In an emergency, contact local emergency services instead of relying on Rivistry.

Accounts and sign-in

Some features require Google or Apple sign-in. You are responsible for maintaining control of the account or identity provider you use and for activity authorized through it. Provide accurate information, do not impersonate another person, and notify us through support if you believe an account is being misused.

You may browse most public features without an account. Account deletion and related controls are available at /account/delete.

Community contributions and your license

You retain ownership of photos, text, and other material you submit. You grant Rivistry a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to receive, store, resize, analyze, review, moderate, reproduce, display, and distribute an approved contribution as needed to operate, archive, and promote the Rivistry community record.

This license lasts while the contribution is retained. You may request deletion through the available controls, but copies may remain in backups, legal records, or third-party caches for a limited period, and material already shared by others may not be fully recoverable.

You represent that you created the contribution or have all permissions required to share it, including permission from identifiable people and rights holders. Do not upload confidential information, private property details, or content that you are not authorized to publish.

Privacy and location choices

Location sharing is optional. You are responsible for reviewing the privacy controls before submitting an observation and for avoiding precise locations, faces, house numbers, license plates, and sensitive wildlife locations. Public display may identify the selected river and a broad area even when a precise location is withheld.

Rivistry’s collection and use of information are described in the Privacy Policy. Do not submit information that must remain secret.

AI suggestions and alerts

Rivistry may use automated tools to suggest species, categories, explanations, or possible observation alerts. These outputs are probabilistic starting points and may be wrong. They do not establish a verified species record, pollution source, regulatory violation, diagnosis, or safety condition.

You are responsible for reviewing AI-assisted content before relying on it or submitting it. Rivistry may correct, label, reject, or remove automated output during moderation.

Prohibited uses and uploads

You may not use Rivistry to break the law, harm people or wildlife, impersonate others, invade privacy, infringe intellectual-property rights, distribute malware or spam, scrape or overload the service, probe security controls, evade rate limits, reverse engineer the app, or interfere with another user’s access.

Do not submit unlawful, threatening, deceptive, hateful, sexually explicit, exploitative, dangerous, or harmful material; personal contact information; recognizable faces without permission; sensitive habitat locations; malware; spam; or material you do not have the right to share.

Moderation and removal

Rivistry may review, reject, relabel, limit, unpublish, delete, or preserve a contribution and may suspend or restrict access when reasonably necessary to protect people, wildlife, the service, a rights holder, or the integrity of the community record. We are not obligated to publish or retain any submission.

We may preserve limited records when needed for security, abuse prevention, dispute resolution, or legal compliance.

Third-party sources and services

Rivistry may link to or display data from government agencies, watershed organizations, USGS and other monitoring networks, map providers, authentication providers, hosting services, and AI providers. Those services may have separate terms and privacy policies. Rivistry does not control their availability, security, or accuracy, and a link does not mean endorsement.

Intellectual property and feedback

The Rivistry name, logo, original interface, editorial text, software, and other Rivistry-created materials are owned by or licensed to Rivistry and may not be copied, republished, or used to imply endorsement without permission. Public-source data remains subject to its original provider’s terms.

If you send suggestions or feedback, you allow Rivistry to use it without compensation or confidentiality obligations, unless we separately agree otherwise.

Availability, warranties, and liability

The service is provided on an “as available” and “as is” basis. To the extent permitted by law, Rivistry disclaims warranties of accuracy, completeness, availability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Rivistry and its contributors are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for decisions, injuries, losses, or property damage arising from reliance on Rivistry, a third-party source, a map, an AI output, or a community observation. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot legally be excluded.

Changes and contact

We may update these terms as Rivistry evolves. We will post the revised terms here with a new effective date. Continued use after the effective date means you accept the revised terms; if you do not agree, stop using Rivistry and delete eligible account content.

Questions, rights requests, and notices may be sent to support@rivistry.org.