This CD-Rom was developed to support two goals.  The first goal was that the CD-ROM was to serve as an archive of the processed data and resulting interpretations of the surficial geology in a form that could be shared with others for use in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or image processing analysis.  The second goal was to create a CD-ROM that would allow the user to interact with the archived data and geologic interpretations.  The data 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 projects used Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) ARC/INFO and associated products.  This does not mean that the user will not wish to do additional processing, especially if they are 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.

        Most of the data on this disk are stored either in raster or vector forms.  Raster data are stored in geotiff format to ease importing of the raster imagery into various GIS software and/or image analysis software.  The vector data consist of line information (bathymetry contour lines), point data (sample location and point attribute information), and polygon coverages as geologic interpretive overlays.  These data layers are  stored in ESRI's ArcView shapefile format.  In addition, to the ArcView shapefiles, the bathymetry contours and sample information are stored in simple ASCII files.
         

        First and foremost, to access this CD-ROM you should have a World Wide Web (WWW) browser.  Access to the CD-ROM was developed using the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) utilized by the World Wide Web (WWW) project.  If you are reading this page, then you have accomplished this task.

        To view and interact with the archived data sets, the user should have one of the following Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) software programs:
         

          Arc/Info - UNIX, Windows 95/98 or Windows NT
          ArcView - UNIX, Windows 95/98 or Windows NT version 3.0 or greater
          ArcExplorer GIS Data Browser - a free GIS data viewer available from ESRI.  ArcExplorer is available in two versions that operate within Windows 95/98 or Windows NT.  Click on the banner below to go directly to ESRI's ArcExplorer information page and download the latest version of the software.

        For more information regarding the ESRI Arc/Info and ArcView programs and other available software, visit the ESRI home page at www.esri.com.
         

        Portions of the geologic interpretation text of this report reference ArcView (*.apr) and ArcExplorer project (*.aep) files. To open these files you must have the appropriate ESRI software programs installed on your computer system.  The intent was to allow the user to simply click an icon to bring up the applications project file and interactively manipulate the datasets for examination and comparison with the researcher's interpretation.

        However, due to differences in how common browsers work within different operating systems this goal was not easily attained.  What we discovered was that in the Windows world you could open an ArcView project file with Netscape but not with Internet Explorer and vice-a-versa for ArcExplorer.  Thus, we have supplied project files tailored for each of the programs and web browsers.  Please note that this is only relative to opening the project file from within a specific web browser and these notes apply to your default web browser defined on the computer system being used.  Assuming the proper application software is properly installed on your computer, either project file may be opened using the application software itself by double-clicking the project name in the Windows Explorer.  The project files may be found in the data/ directory at the top level of this CD-ROM.

        There are three complete project files available.  Each file contains a view with all the available data coverages.  Due to restrictions in ArcExplorer though, the views are in latitude and longitude and are somewhat distorted.  The ArcView projects are all referenced to a UTM zone 17 coordinate system.
         
         
        Filename Description
        arcvieww.apr ArcView project file to be used within Netscape for Windows
        arcviewu.apr ArcView project file to be used within Netscape for Unix.  This project file assumes the CD-ROM has been mounted to the directory /cdrom.
        arcexplr.aep ArcExplorer project file to be used within Internet Explorer

        You selected the project file and nothing happened!

        If the project file doesn't open from your browser, you may need to modify your web browser to automatically start these programs.  This will allow the program to be started by selecting the appropriate project file from within the HTML document. Eventhough you may have ArcView or ArcExplorer available on your computer system, your web browser may not have the program associated in its list of applications.  You may follow the steps below to modify your browser's associated programs to link the applications program if an association does not currently exist.  Please note that these steps are general and do not relate to any specific web browser.
         
          • open your web browser's "Preferences" window
          • select application (a window displaying the programs associated with the web browser should appear)
          • select new
          • depending on the web browser and application being associated, enter the following parameters
        Web Browser Application Parameters
        Description ArcView project file ArcExplorer project file
        MIME Type application/apr application/aep
        Suffixes apr aep
        Application  C:\your\path\to\arcview.exe %s C:\your\path\to\arcexplorer.exe %s

        If you are setting up ArcView to work with a UNIX browser, please use the UNIX directory notation (i.e. /your/path/to/ArcView). Also, you must include the %s after the ArcView or ArcExplorer.  This will allow the programs to automatically open the selected hyperlink file. When completed, selecting the Geologic Discussion hyperlink from the web browser will launch the appropriate program and allow interactive manipulation of the data layers for that specific geologic discussion.
         

        ... and if you don't have the ESRI programs

        If you do not have these program available, you may view the raster imagery with any available graphics software capable of reading a tiff/geotiff image.  Programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, Corel Photopaint or CorelDraw in the PC/MAC environment and XV in the UNIX environment would be appropriate.

        Browse graphics of the vector data layers are also available for viewing and are displayed over the sidescan sonar mosaic of the area.  The browse graphics are stored as GIF formatted images and should display in all WWW browsers.  Links to these images are available from the Data Page and may be viewed by selecting browse graphic link below the layer name in the vector overlay tables as well as from the associated metadata page for the individual coverage. [an error occurred while processing this directive]