LANDFIRE Data Distribution Site User Instructions

The user instructions will cover an overview of how to interact with the viewer. There are 4 different menu sections of the viewer. Each menu can contain tools and widgets. Each widget contains a help panel specific to that widget. If you do not find the help you need below, please contact us at landfire@usgs.gov. The main menus and tools are:

This is the map controls portion of the menu. Tools and widgets in this menu allow the user to interact with the map view and manipulate the location and scale. Each widget will have its own help panel describing usage of that widget.

Zoom In - used to enlarge a portion of the map. Select this tool, then click and draw a box on the map around the area what you wish to see in more detail. Clicking without drawing a box will zoom in with the center point where you clicked, by a factor of 2.

Zoom Out - used to zoom out of a more detailed view of the map. The box drawn with this tool is used to calculate a zoom out factor. A smaller box will zoom out more than a large box. Clicking without drawing a box will zoom out with the center point where you clicked, by a factor of 2.

Full Extent - allows you to zoom out to the full extent of the viewer.

Move Map - used to drag the map in any direction and re-center the view. Simply click on the Move Map Tool, then drag the map to a new location.

Overview - displays a small map. The red box represents the area on the main map that is currently visible. Clicking on the red box and dragging it will move the viewable area of the main map.

Bookmarks - predefined locations that can be selected to quickly view a particular area or region in the map. There are 5 panels within this widget.

This is the Bookmarks widget. There are 5 panels within this widget. They are explained below.

states bookmark States - This panel will provide you 50 links to the 50 states within the United States. Clicking on a given state bookmark will zoom the toolkit into the selected state. To remove the bookmark, click on the red and white X icon.

regions bookmark Regions - This panel will provide you links to some regions within the United States. Clicking on a given region bookmark will zoom the toolkit into the selected region. To remove the bookmark, click on the red and white X icon.

locales bookmark Locales - This panel will provide you links to a large number of cities within the United States. Clicking on a given city bookmark will zoom the toolkit into the selected city. To remove the bookmark, click on the red and white X icon.

Custom - This panel will provide you a list of bookmarks that have been added by the user. Clicking on a given bookmark will zoom the toolkit into the defined area. To remove the bookmark, click on the red and white X icon. Also, if you delete the cookies within your browser your custom bookmarks will be removed.

Add Custom Bookmark - This panel allows you to add bookmarks to the Custom panel. In order to do this, a session cookie is added to your browser. If you delete the cookies within your browser your custom bookmarks will be removed.

This is the map data sources portion of the menu. Tools and widgets in this menu allow the user to change or modify the data source or layers in the map view. Each widget will have its own help panel describing usage of that widget.

View Data - allows the user to turn available layers on and off. The transparency of the layer can be adjusted as well.

View Legends - allows a user to view the legends for the current visible layers selected in the View Data widget.

Download Attribute Tables - allows the user to download zipped files to be used for analysis.

Download Data - provides the ability to select data for download.

Download U.S. Insular Areas - provides the link to the web page that provides links to download the zip files for each Insular Island and Territory.

This is the interactive widgets portion of the menu. Widgets in this menu interact with the map and the user to provide advanced functionality. Each widget will have its own help panel describing usage of that widget.

Annotate/Measure - This widget has several different drawing and measuring aspects. They are activated by clicking on the graphic within the first panel of the widget. They are explained in more detail within the Help panel of the widget itself.

Elevation - provides an interface to the USGS Elevation Query web service and allows for elevation queries to be performed.

Gazetteer - allows the user to zoom to a specific location using a Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) text search. Use various combinations of city names, county names and/or state names.

Identify - allows the user to click anywhere on the map to display the imagery source information.

Legend Query - allows the user to view the legend color and description for a specific point based on the raster layers that are currently being displayed.

Scale - works by determining the current map units per pixel, and then creating a line that is 96 pixels long (~1 inch on most monitors) at the center of the map. It then uses a geometry service to reproject that line to a coordinate system that uses meters and somewhat minimizes the distortion (UTM or Polar Stereographic depending upon latitude). Once that is done it uses the geometry service again to get the length of the result feature. The scale is expressed in 1 inch = x inches by default, but that can be changed by selecting a different unit of measurement from the drop down list. The feature created to measure the scale is a horizontal line.

XY/USNG - allows the user to query the map for coordinate information including U. S. National Grid coordinates.

This is the help and information portion of the menu.

About - has information about the viewer.

Help - This link will open these user instructions.

Contact Us - This is a link to the LANDFIRE HelpDesk form.

Home - This is a link to the LANDFIRE project page.