Help!

You have come to the GeoSpatial Data Integration Portal in one of two different ways.

  1. Directly:     using this site as a 'GeoSpatial Portal', or...
  2. Indirectly: using this site as a dynamic display of collections having come from biodiversity data portal. Sites which use (or will eventually use) this portal for the display of location information are NZFungi (coming soon) and NZ Soils.

When coming directly to the site you will be able to choose the map and layers you want to view and build up a spatial view of your choosing. For the collection layers you will be able to identify the collections, link off to both the name details and the collection details of any collection found.

Basics

IMPORTANT: The whole system heavily depends on session variables due to the nature of ArcIMS, and because of that:

  • Do not use the back button or any other means of going back to the last screen (IE. ALT+ARROW key combinations, main menu back command or right mouse click back command)
  • If your browser does not have sessions enabled you will not be able to use the site.
  • JavaScript needs to be enabled in order to expand each topic and reveal the contained layers on the Catalogue page

Navigation

At the very top banner there are a series of tabs.

  • HOME: base or splash page for this site
  • MAP: the main section which contains a sub-tabbed page giving you the layer catalogue and the spatial map.
    See 'The map pages' section below for more details on using the map.
  • ABOUT: tells what this site is about and gives more background information
  • FEEDBACK: you can give us your feedback via this form, the good and the bad, so we can continue to improve
  • HELP: this page...

Catalogue page

On this page you select the map service you want (NZ or World) and then select the layer(s) you want displayed on the map page. Each service or map will have its own set of topics and layers under each topic. Figure below

 

Using the layer catalogue

On the Catalogue page you can:

  • Select the map service you want
    • Each service has its own set of topics and layers under each topic
  • Use the Quick Guide to quickly familiarise yourself with this page
  • View expandable topic headings. Expand them to view the layers under each topic
  • Click on the More info... link (pop-up window) to view details about each of the layers
  • Select the layer(s) you want to view on the Map page. The more that are selected the longer it will take to display the map

Note: Each layer has its own layer order, and if you select more than one opaque layers which are filled with a solid colour only the top most layer will be visible, hiding the other layers underneath it.

Map page

The sub-tabbed map page, containing the layer catalogue and spatial map, is the main part of this site. The layer catalogue sub-tab gives you all of the available layers, organised by topic, from which to choose, and the sub-tab spatial map displays these layers. In the spatial map section you have several options available to you. You can zoom in and out, pan around and identify features on any layer that contains identifiable data.

On the spatial map section there is a panel that toggles between displaying the names of the selected layers and a legend which visually shows you how each layer's features are coded (by colour, pattern or both).

Using the spatial map

Once on the spatial map page you have the options of:

  • Zooming in and out
    • The NZ map uses the scale bar at the base of the map will allow you go zoom in or out to preset scales. The NZ map, World map and the Antarctic map have their own scalebar with different scales  (see figure below)

  • Panning
    • Selecting the hand icon  radio button allows you to click anywhere on the map, causing it to redraw itself, the spot you clicked on now appearing in the exact middle of the map
    • On the NZ map you can use the 8 points surrounding the map itself to pan in the pointed direction. This will shift the map image half a screen in the selected direction
  • Identifying features
    • Selecting the identify  radio button allows you to then click on a feature on the map and get any information about it, if available. Identified features will be brought back as datasets and include all selected layers which have metadata attached to them
  • Layer/Legend panel (see figure above)
    • clicking of the 'View legend' radio button will show the legend and clicking on the 'View layer' will bring you back to the layer view.
  • Map size and map service
    • There are three map services available at the moment
      • NZ, World and Antarctica
      • If you came from an external site to view a single collection location or are using the GIS Portal as your starting point, you choose the map service you want on the catalogue page.
    • You can choose between three different maps sizes. The smaller the map the quicker the response. The three map sizes available are 400/500/600 pixels square. If performance is slow or your monitor resolution is low then you may want to view a smaller size map so you can see more of it on your screen.
    • The default map size is medium (500 X 500 pixels)
Working with layers

The layer view panel displays the layer name, if selectable it will also display a radio button and if available for collection information will also have a check box. If the layer is not visible at the current map scale it will be greyed out (see figure above - VCM layer), and you will not see the layer until you zoom in to its visible zoom extent.

Example: To identify existing layers features select the 'identify'  icon radio button and click on the map at a location you want features identified. The data is then returned with the information you requested. Information would be sent back in a dataset format and displayed as tables, as seen below. If nothing is returned it means that their may be no data for the layers at that location


If you have further questions or recommendations, please click on the FEEDBACK tab and fill in your request.