OFR03-221 Home

Introduction

Bedrock Photographs

GIS Data Catalog

• Well Data

• Basemap Data

Photo Gallery

References

Acknowledgments

Contacts

Disclaimer

README

GIS Introduction

This CD-ROM contains several data layers (or themes) that are used to create a geographic planar view of western Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The locations of the wells and the associated bedrock photographs may be viewed within this geographic planar view.

Data layers are provided with geographic coordinates to allow the data to be integrated into a Geographic Information System (GIS). A GIS is defined as a system of hardware and software to support the display, manipulation, and analysis of spatial data for mapping and complex data solving.  This integrated package provides researchers the ability to integrate, analyze and map various datasets to help with economic and social policy-making decisions regarding the environment.

The data presented here are intended to be GIS-ready in as much as the data do not require any additional cleanup, formatting, renaming of fields or other "data work" to use the data in the GIS of choice. This project uses the Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) ArcView and ArcGIS software as the Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping tool. Data layers archived here should not require additional processing to be utilized within the ESRI software. This does not mean that a user will not wish to do additional processing, especially if utilizing a different GIS software package or spheroid, but that it is not necessary to do additional processing simply to utilize the data in its minimum archive format.

This CD-ROM contains an ESRI ArcView 3.3 Geographic Information System (GIS) project file: capecod.apr, stored at the top level directory of this publication. This project file contains all the vector data utilized within this report.  The project file contains a startup script, Drive Selection. This script will be run upon startup and will prompt the user for the directory path to the bedrock photographs image directory. This information is needed in order to establish 'hotlinks' found within the project file.  The user may need to modify the drive selection based on the configuration of their computer system.

The vector data consist of a single point data layer, wellsite, that provides the bedrock photograph locations and attribute information, and a polygon data layer, nos80k, that provides the coastline. Other data layers include Cape Cod town boundaries, village locations, and extent of the Massachusetts Military Reservation (MMR).

For those who do not have the ESRI software or a compatible GIS data browser available on their computer, a free viewer, ArcExplorer, is available from ESRI. Please note that the ArcExplorer software is limited to the Microsoft Windows operating systems.  The key functionality of ArcExplorer is the viewing of spatial data. The user will need to add the selected data layers by utilizing the add data button. 

Each GIS data layer from this publication is cataloged below for easy access. The individual data layers are described below and include the shapefile name (e.g. wellsite) which is linked to a browse graphic showing the data layer extent and coverage.   Selecting the data layer name will result in the browse graphic being displayed in a separate browser window.

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata for the individual data layers is  provided in three versions (HTML, FAQ, text). Selecting associated metadata files from the table below will open the information in a new browser window.

A 'zip' compressed, downloadable archive file containing the component the ArcView shapefile for each data layer is also provided. Compressed downloadable files were created using the Windows program WINZIP v8.0. For users who do not have software capable of uncompressing the archived zip files, a free version of the software is available from Winzip Computing, Inc. or Pkware, Inc..  In addition to the ESRI shapefile, the well site data layer is available in an ASCII text format and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet formats to allow users who may not have access to GIS software to read the data layer tabular information in an alternate format.  The first record of the ASCII file and Excel spreadsheet contains the name of the data fields for that file.

WELL DATA

BASEMAP DATA