Lake Pontchartrain Basin:  Bottom Sediments and Related Environmental Resources

GIS Project Files and Workspaces

ArcExplorer project files, ArcView project files, and MapInfo workspaces are available to demonstrate the intended display parameters for most of the GIS layers. The CD-ROM is organized with the layers in the correct directories so that these project files can reference them. Additional layers can be added to these projects by opening them directly from the CD (from the directory sed_data/MapInfo/Tabs or sed_data/ArcView) or downloading the compressed versions first to the hard drive and decompressing them (see the data matrix).

ArcExplorer

The free GIS ArcExplorer version 1.1 software is provided so that any user with Windows 95/98 or NT can download it and use it to display the project files below (*.aep) or individual ArcView shapefiles (*.shp). The basic functions of the program are easy to learn. A manual for ArcExplorer version 1.1 is also provided in PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader software). The latest versions of the ArcExplorer and Adobe Acrobat software are available for free on the Internet; visit the web sites listed in Resource Links.

Click here to install ArcExplorer from the CD (version 1.1). If you have trouble installing it from this link, go directly to the directory install/windows/ on your CD-ROM and double-click "aeclient.exe".

Click here to open the ArcExplorer manual from the CD (The manual, "arcexplorer.pdf", can also be opened from the directory install/windows/)..

Once you have installed ArcExplorer, the following project files may be opened

Note that the Class Breaks option in ArcExplorer uses quantile classification to create graduated color maps. In the quantile classification method, each class contains the same number of features. For this reason, the ranges of values chosen in the lead and zinc projects do not reflect the Effects-Range Low (ERL) and Effects-Range Medium (ERM) toxicity ranges (Long and others, 1995) as in MapInfo, ArcView, and .gif figures.

Example of ArcExplorer project:
(click for full view)

Tips for getting started in ArcExplorer:

1.	You can change the portion of the map that shows in the view by zooming in, zooming out, or panning in any direction with the following tools:       To zoom out to the full extent of all the themes, use this tool:
2.	A new data layer (theme) may be added to the view with the "add theme" tool seen here: .  Browse the file structure to find a shapefile in the sed_data/arcview directory on your CD drive. (You can double-click files or select several files and click the "add theme" button at the top of the dialog box). Then, click on the empty white box by the theme's name to turn it on.
3.	To view a feature's attribute information, the theme must be made active by clicking on it in the legend (it will look raised when it is active, as "Stations" does above). Then the identify tool can be used to click on a feature in that theme and bring up any information stored in its attribute table.
4.	Experiment with the query tool     to find specific attributes of a shapefile. (Again, that theme must be active). The results of a query can be highlighted, viewed, and (or) exported to an ASCII file for use in another program.

ArcView and MapInfo

ArcView project files and MapInfo workspaces are offered here for users with either of these GIS software packages. They contain windows with some of the GIS layers displayed with appropriate colors and symbols to demonstrate the way they are intended to be viewed. These files provide a convenient introduction to the data. Other GIS layers may be added to these views or opened separately.

Note that these files refer to files on the CD-ROM. If the .zip files containing GIS layers are saved to a hard drive, these project files and workspaces may have to be edited in order to reference that set of files correctly.

This ArcView project file has relative path names, so it should open from any CD drive. It contains five views that correspond to the five separate project files for ArcExplorer and MapInfo (Overview, Bathymetry, Lead Concentrations, Zinc Concentrations, and Sand Percent). 

Example of ArcView project:
(click for full view)

There are five MapInfo workspaces showing different layers. The pathnames are relative, so they should work with any drive letter.

Example of MapInfo workspace:
(click for full view)

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