1 Introduction to GIS software
There are a wide variety of GIS software packages available. Some of these software packages are freely available for you to download and could be used in your classroom. ArcGIS Explorer is one of those freely available GIS software packages.
Objective: The objective of this tutorial is to familiarize yourself with some basic functions of ArcGIS Explorer.
Please note that this tutorial does not attempt to give you a complete introduction to all basic functions in ArcGIS Explorer. It is rather a starting point for you to explore some more of the
functionality that is offered by ArcGIS Explorer for some of your specific geospatial data analysis needs/geospatial classroom activity.
Note: This tutorial has been written for PCs so some parts of the tutorial might not work for you if you are using a Mac.
1) Installing ArcGIS Explorer on your own computer
Unfortunately, ArcGIS Explorer does only run on PCs. To install ArcGIS Explorer on your own PC, click on the executable (ArcGISExplorerDownload) that can be found in your Ecology class folder (C: …\Ecology Student Resources\Software\PC\ArcGIS Explorer). You can also download ArcExplorer for free from the following ESRI website: (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/download.html).
2) Start ArcGIS Explorer
2 The following window will appear:
Select Associate KML with ArcGIS Explorer.
You should now see a satellite image of the world that looks something like the image shown below:
3 To navigate to the McCall area (or the area you are interested in), pick the Home tab on the ribbon, click on the Find button and type in “Mccall, ID” or the geographic coordinates of the location you are looking for.
2) Reading in field data and displaying it
In this step you will learn how to read in the GPS coordinates associated with the plant
4 Next, save your file as a .txt (table delimited file). To do this, click on the Microsoft Windows icon in the upper left hand corner of the Excel screen and click on Save as /other formats. This will bring up a window that allows you to save your spreadsheet in different file formats. You want to save your file as a .txt file. To do this, find the Save as type pulldown menu and select text (Tab delimited).
After you click Ok a warning window will pop-up. Click OK. Another warning window will pop-up. Select Yes. Now we are ready to read the text file you just created into ArcGIS Explorer.
To do this, pick the Home tab on the ribbon, click on the Add Content pulldown menu, and click on Add text file ... .
A window will appear that allows you to navigate to the text file you created earlier. Once you located your GPS file, specify the file delimiter (if it is a .txt file it is tab delimited so select the "Tab") and click Next. In the following window you will have to select the columns in your GPS file that contain the latitude and longitude information as well as the coordinate system (most likely WGS-84) of the data you collected. Also, you have to select the column that contains the title field (e.g. the columns that contains the unique name or number you assigned to each of your GPS points. In our case that is the “Location” column). Finally, select All Fields in the Description Field dropdown menu.
3) Geotagging pictures
5 corner. Picasa will then load a Google map. Bellow the map you will be able to type in the GPS
coordinates your picture is associated with. For example, if your GPS coordinates are 44.91° (Lat) and - 116.10° (Long), you would type the following in the Search for an address field:
In our case, the picture was taken at the following location: 44.928083° (Lat) and -116.083655° (Long). After you typed in the coordinates, hit the search button and a pop-up window will appear on the Google map that asks you if you would like to put your image here. Click OK and your picture is geotagged.
6 4) Importing GIS data layers and shapefiles
Many GIS data that could assist in the interpretation and analysis of your geospatial data are already freely available online. So a good place to start looking for geospatial datasets before you go out in the field to collect data might be to search online. A good place to start looking for GIS data for Idaho is the Inside Idaho website (http://inside.uidaho.edu). For this part of the tutorial, please open the Inside Idaho website (http://inside.uidaho.edu) and click on the Popular data in the Find Data dropdown menu. This will bring you to the organizational chart shown below that gives an overview on different types of datasets that are available (e.g. datasets related to climate, geoscience, transportation etc.)
7 other layers, you have to transform it to the coordinate system of your other layers. Otherwise, you would not be able to lay it on top of your other GIS data layers (Note: It is beyond this tutorial to discuss how to transform GIS data layers from one coordinate system to another).
After you familiarized yourself with the data, click on ESRI Layer File (lyr) and download and save the dataset on your computer. After you downloaded the dataset, pick the Home tab on the ArcGIS Explorer ribbon, click on the Add Content pulldown menu, click on ArcGIS layers ..., and navigate to the folder where you saved the precipitation data under. You should now see a precipitation map for Idaho shown below:
To see the legend of the map, right click on in the Contents
window and click on Show Legend.
8 Figure 1. Illustration of raster and vector data (Source of illustration:
http://www.automation-drive.com/raster-data)
This means you already worked with vector data in part 2 of this tutorial when you imported GPS locations (or points) into ArcGIS Explorer. Now, we want to create a map that shows the location of MOSS, the Nokes Experimental forest (which is an experimental forest approximately 3 miles southeast from MOSS), and Ponderosa State Park. To do this, zoom into the McCall area. Next, pick the Home tab on the ArcGIS Explorer ribbon, click on the Add Content pulldown menu, click on Shapefiles ... (Note: a shapefile is a vector data format), and navigate to the Nokes and IDPR_Managed_Land folders
9 State Park should appear (please note that the IDPR_Managed_Land shapefile contains all areas in Idaho managed by Idaho State Parks and Recreation – only the area that covers the peninsula reaching into Payette Lake and at the northern end of Payette Lake is associated with Ponderosa State Park). You will see that both the area covering the Nokes Experimental Forest and Ponderosa State Park do have the same color. To give the Nokes Experimental Forest a different color, click on the little arrow in the Contents menu next to the nokes_boundary.
10 OK – now we mapped the area associated with Ponderosa State Park and with the Nokes Experimental Forest but what about MOSS? To map the area associated with MOSS, we are zooming into the area.
Next, we are choosing the Area tool from the Home tab ...
11 After you traced the entire area, simply double click. Voilá – now you mapped the Nokes Experimental Forest, Ponderosa State Park, and MOSS.
Now, we want to make a map with a legend. To do this, we first want to change the names in our Contents window to “MOSS”, “Nokes Experimental Forest”, “Ponderosa State Park”. To do this, simply right click on the current names and select Rename. This then allows you to rename the names associated with our three shapefiles.
12 You can also adjust the size of the legend window by putting your mouse on the corner of the Contents window.
Now, find the prt scr on your keyboard …
13 After you open Paint, simply right click within the white area and select paste. You should now see your map within Paint but also some information you do not want. To just select the map area you want to show, click on the Select tool on the Paint menu bar that allows you to identify the area you are interested in. Make sure you select the north arrow in the lower left corner, the legend, and the scale bar in the lower right corner since every good map should have this information.
Once you selected the area, right click and select copy, press Ctrl+N, select Don’t Save in the window that pops up, right click within the white area and select paste. Finally, go to Save as …and save your map as a JPEG picture on your harddrive.
Make sure you save the map image in a location where you can later find it. Now, navigate to the folder where you saved your map image and open it.
14 Congratulations, here is your first map you made with ArcGIS Explorer. Make sure that it has a legend, north arrow, and a scale bar.
6) Helpful tutorials on tools that might help in the analysis of your data
How to query your data (http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisexplorer/1500/en/query_editor.htm)
7) Helpful resources
To learn more about ArcGIS Explorer (e.g. see some demos), go to the ArcGIS Explorer website: http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/index.html.
Disclaimer: Please e-mail any suggestions of how to potentially improve this document to Jan Eitel (jeitel@ uidaho.edu). Use of trade names does not constitute an official endorsement by the McCall Outdoor Science School.
