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LASEDViewer User Guide

The main banner contains four drop-down menus along the bottom and ten tool shortcuts along the upper right. Clicking on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) logo on the left side will minimize the banner. Several tool shortcuts are located along the top, right-hand side of the banner. These are duplicates of some of the most frequently used tools in the drop-down menus. The drop-down menus are accessed by positioning the mouse pointer over one of the four large icons along the bottom of the banner. The drop-down menus contain buttons, widgets, and menus to work with the map. A widget is a collapsable window that contains tools that allow the user to interact with the map.

The Map menu contains buttons and widgets that control the layers displayed on the map. The first four items on the menu control which basemap is displayed. Only one basemap can be displayed at a time and a basemap cannot be queried.

Street Map - Click to display a street basemap.

Topo Map - Click to display a USGS topographic basemap.

Satellite Map - Click to display a satellite- and aerial-imagery basemaps.

Shaded-Relief Map - Click to display a shaded-relief basemap.

Clicking on one of the folder icons opens a widget that will display list of layers. The layers are grouped by theme (for example: cores layers, seismic layers, geology layers).

The widgets have several tabs that contain links to layer metadata and download files, legends, and controls to set the transparency of the layer group. The default tab is shown in the image to the left.

The default tab provides a list of layers and check boxes to set layer visibility. By clicking the checkboxes, you can turn the layers on and off.

The next tab provides links for users to view layer metadata and to download zip archives containing layer shapefiles.

This tab contains a legend for layers included in the group.

This tab contains a slider that allows the user to control layer group transparency.

There are seven feature layer groups: LASED Cores, usSEABED, LASED Seismic, LASED Bathymetry, LASED Sidescan Sonar Mosaics, Sea-Floor Change Atlas, and Louisiana Geology.

Overview - Click to open an overview map that will display the current-view extent in the context of a larger geographical area.

The Navigation menu contains a set of tools and a widget that facilitate moving around the map.

Zoom In - Click to activate the zoom-in tool. This enables you to draw a rectangle by clicking and dragging on the screen. The map view will zoom in to the extent of the rectangle.

Zoom Out - Click to activate the zoom-out tool. This enables you to draw a rectangle by clicking and dragging on the screen. The map view will zoom out to a scale dependent on the size of the rectangle. The smaller the rectangle, the more the map will zoom out.

Full Extent - Click to reset the map extent to the original extent.

Pan - Click to activate the pan tool. This enables you to pan around the map with the mouse pointer. You can click and drag the map, or you can double-click with the left mouse button to recenter the map to the pointer's location.

The Tools menu contains widgets that help you query and search the information in the map.

Identify - Click to open the Identify widget. The Identify widget contains a tool that will return information about an item by activating the tool and clicking on the item on the map. The tool can return tabular data and, if available, clickable links to cruise logbooks, seismic-profile sheets, and buttons that allow the user to view core sample data.

Search - Click to open the Search widget. The Search widget contains a tool that will allow the user to search a specified layer spatially by using the mouse to create a rectangle in the map area, or textually by searching the layers attribute table for values. Like the Identify tool, the Search tool can return tabular data, and, if available, clickable links to cruise logbooks, seismic-profile sheets, and buttons that allow the user to view core sample data.

Draw - Click to open the Draw widget. The Draw widget contains tools that will allow the user to draw graphics, such as lines, points, and polygons, on the map area and label the graphics with text. The user can also label the graphics with measurements, such as line length or polygon area.

Query Layers - Click to open the Query Layers widget. The Query Layers widget allows users to query several of the layers in the cores and seismic layers groups. Users can create SQL-like queries using more than one of the layer table fields.

The Help menu contains links that will open webpages in new browser windows.

User Guide - Click to open the User Guide (this page).

USGS Home - Click to open the homepage of the United States Geological Survey.

USGS St Pete - Click to open the homepage of the USGS Center for Coastal & Watershed Studies, located in St Petersburg, Florida.

About - Click to open a widget that displays build and authorship information about this site.