README FILE

A Marine GIS Library for Massachusetts Bay: 
Focusing on Disposal Sites, Contaminated Sediments, and Sea Floor Mapping.

U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-439

October 1999

Edited by Bradford Butman¹ and John A. Lindsay²
Compiled by:  George Graettinger², Laura Hayes¹, Chris Polloni¹, Ellen Mecray¹, and Tom Simon²

¹U.S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole, MA
²NOAA Office of Response and Restoration, Seattle, WA

USING THIS CD-ROM

• This CD-ROM (Compact Disc-Read Only Memory) has been produced in accordance with the ISO 9660 CD-ROM Standard. It was designed to be used on computers equipped with a CD-ROM reader and mouse, both IBM(tm) compatibles and MacIntosh(tm) hardware.
  
  
• The text portion of this CD can be read with any html-compatible browser like NETSCAPE(tm), MOSAIC(tm), or INTERNET EXPLORER(tm) by opening the "start.htm" file included in the root directory of the CD-ROM.
  
  
• The GIS data can be explored by using a set of ArcView project files. The ArcView 3.1 project file loads all data available including grids, imagery, and video and, therefore, requires a high performance system (>10x  CD-ROM reader and   >200Mhz processor). A less demanding alternative for the user, regardless of the version of ArcView software, is to use the ArcView 3.0 project file which has a more limited data set.

DISCLAIMER

This Compact Disc-Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) publication was prepared by members of the US Geological Survey. Neither USGS or the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, make any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed in this report, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference therein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. Any views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

VIEWING THE DATA ON THIS CD-ROM

The GIS data on this CD-ROM is organized into Chapters and Libraries, as discussed in the Introduction. Each Chapter and Library is described in an HTML document viewable with any Web browser, and displayed in a View window in the ArcView projects. It is recommended that the user run both at the same time. Each Chapter and Library is accessible through the Table of Contents in the HTML document and the Project window in the ArcView project.

To start the HTML document click here: start.htm

To view the GIS data using the accompanying project files, you must have ArcView 3.0 or ArcView 3.1 (and Spatial Analyst) installed on your computer. For the ArcView 3.1 project file to function properly, the user must copy the ArcView extensions that are in the tools directory under av_ext and put them in the users ArcView directory under the ext32 directory.  The Chartview.dll file must be copied to the bin32 directory.

To open ArcView project files:

Relative paths have been inserted into the following files so that they work from any CD drive letter.
Go to the mbaygis directory of the CD-ROM and double-click on the project file:
mbay_30.apr  (for ArcView version 3.0)
mbay_31.apr  (for ArcView version 3.1 with Spatial Analyst)

or open the project from your ArcView application.

Some of the shapefiles have features with hotlinks to imagery and videos. Two buttons have been added to the toolbar in the ArcView 3.1 project file that activate imagery and video. The imagery symbol is the lightning bolt and the video symbol is the letter V. In order for these hotlinks to work correctly, the global variable "mbimage" must be defined in the user's system as follows: 

For Windows 3.x or Windows 95/98 users you must edit the autoexec.bat file located on drive C: (usually c:\autoexec.bat) and add the following line:

    SET MBIMAGE=(Use the drive letter assigned to your CD-ROM drive):\mbaygis

    Example:  for CD-ROM on E drive,  "SET MBIMAGE=E:\mbaygis"

    Once the CD-ROM path variable has been added to your autoexec.bat file, you must reboot the system.

For Windows NT users:

This setting is defined in the Control Panel System environment window. For a system with the CD-ROM drive assigned the letter E, set the user variable MBIMAGE to the value E:\mbaygis.

Copying GIS layers

The entire CD-ROM may be copied to your hard drive to improve speed. This may be done through Windows Explorer (or other file manager) since the entire directory structure must be moved as a whole to retain necessary pathnames.

Individual coverages or shapefiles may be copied off the CD-ROM to hard drive through ArcView's "Manage Data Sources" under the File menu. ARC/INFO coverages and grids are stored as a series of files in two separate directories (the directory with the same name as the coverage/grid, and the "info" directory). Each shapefile is actually a package of at least 3 files with the extensions .shp, .dbf, .shx (and perhaps .sbn, .sbx, .ain, or .aih). Using "Manage Data Sources" for ANY copying, moving, deleting, or renaming of these coverages ensures that all the files will get moved and the GIS layer will still function properly.

To start the HTML document click here: index.htm