Help Contents

Getting Started

ASRIS Maps Overview

What are Map Layers?

Visible and Active Layers

Main Toolbar

Layers with Hyperlinks

Extracting Layers

Addtional Tools

System Requirements

Getting started (click on a heading to view a presentation)

1. Navigation in ASRIS (3MB WMV)
2. Viewing soil maps at different scales (4MB WMV)
3. Contextual information to help with interpretation (4MB WMV)
4. Producing statistical summaries (4MB WMV)
5. Representative soil profiles - images and detailed data (3MB WMV)
6. Customised queries (3MB WMV)
7. Printing maps and exporting images (3MB WMV)

ASRIS Maps Overview

View the maps window in the maximised setting. When the maps window is open, the address bar and toolbar will not be visible. This avoids conflicts with forward and back buttons. The browser tools will reset when you open a new window.

The maps window (shown below) has a display area and various tools for navigation and querying. The overview map at the top left is a locator and can be used for panning. The main toolbar is on the left hand side of the window. The layer list on the right of the screen can be toggled to display the map legend. Press the "Refresh Map" button after changing the layer settings.

What are Map Layers?

The ASRIS map window provides access to a Geographic Information System via the web. The maps are created in response to the settings you specify with the buttons and selectors. Map layers are the different sets of information that can be added to your map. The system can add and subtract layers from the map according to the scale. This stops your map becoming cluttered with lots of fine detail when large areas are being viewed.

There are several types of layers:

• Map information layers: These are features common to all maps (e.g. coastlines, roads, rivers, town locations). They are usually points, lines or shapes. Many of these layers can be displayed at one time.
  
• Images: These are digital pictures that act as backdrops to the map. They include Landsat mosaics, shaded DEMs and topographic maps. These can only be displayed one at a time. The image highest on the layer list masks the others.
  
• Tract Layers: These layers show the boundaries of soil map units. Tract layers are defined at Levels 1-5 in the ASRIS hierarchy.
  
• Soil attribute layers: These layers contain soil information for the range of soil attributes outlined in the ASRIS Technical Specifictions. The same soil attribute can be displayed at a range of scales (i.e. different levels of the hierarchy) and in different reporting frameworks (e.g. IBRA or NHT boundaries).

To access the metadata for a layer, click on the layer name in the layer list. To Search for ASRIS metadata click here.

Visible and Active Layers

A visible layer can be displayed on the map. To make a layer visible, check the box next to the layer and click the "Refresh Map" button.

To remove a layer from the map display area, uncheck the box next to the layer and click the "Refresh Map" button.

A layer is set to active if the user wants more information. To make a layer active, click on the page icon next to the layer. Only one layer can be interrogated at a time. Once active, a layer can be interrogated using tools from the toolbar (e.g. query, hyperlink). The Identify tool has the ability to drill down through all visible layers and provide attribute information for the location of interest.

Main Toolbar

The main toolbar is on the left of the maps windows. Placing the mouse pointer over a tool will display its function. The active tool is named in the red bar above the map window.

	Zoom In: Zooms to the region that you click or drag a box around
	Zoom Out: Zooms out from the region that you click or drag a box around
	Zoom to Full Extent: Zooms to the full extent of the map
	Zoom to Active Layer: Zooms to the full extent of the active layer
	Back to Last Extent: Zooms to the previous extent
	Pan: Pans the display in the direction that you drag the mouse pointer
	Hyperlink: Displays graphs and PDF documents relating to the active layer
	Identify: Displays attribute information in a table below the map for the feature identified by clicking
	Query: Searches for features based on a query expression
	Measure: Measures distances on the map in kilometres
	Select by Rectangle: Selects a group of features bounded by or in contact with a rectangle drawn on the map
	Select by Line/Polygon: Selects a group of features bounded by or in contact with a line or polygon drawn on the map
	Clear Selection: Clears the selected set of features
	Print: Prints the map to your default printer
	Toggle Overview Map: Adds or removes the overview map from the top left corner of the map display
	Extract: Downloads visible layers as ESRI shape files to your computer (polygon layers only)
	Toggle ASRIS Banner: Adds or removes the ASRIS banner to create a different sized map display
	Toggle TOC: Adds or removes the Layer/Legend frame to create a different sized map display
	Lime Tool: Displays the Liming and Soil Acidification Calculators (L5 pH Layer 1 must be visible and active)

Layers with Hyperlinks

ASRIS includes hyperlinks to additional data. To invoke hyperlinks, make the the layer of interest visible and active, then select the hyperlink tool from the toolbar and click on the feature of interest. The following table summarizes layers with hyperlinked data.

Extracting Layers

This facility is currently unavailable.

Addtional Tools

Layer	Toggle between Layer List and Legend: Switches back and forth between the map legend and list of layers
Legend
Help	Hide/Show Help: Displays the help menu
Messages	Hide/Show Messages: Displays the scrolling messages
	Refresh Map: Refreshes the map according to the selections in the layer list above
	Pan to N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W: Pans the map in the slected direction

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems and Browsers:

Macintosh 9.2, OS X, OS 10.2 using MSIE v.4 - 6, Netscape v.4.7 - 7, Mozilla v.1.0 - 3.0, Safari 1.2, Firefox 1.0

MS Windows 98, 2000, XP, VISTA, 7 using MSIE v.4 - 10 or Netscape v.4.7 - 7, Mozilla Firefox v.1.0 - 12.0

Linux 3.0 using Mozilla v.1.7 and Galeon v.1.2.5

Solaris using Netscape v.4.7 - 7

Other browsers have not been tested and they may not run ASRIS.

The ASRIS web application works best with 15" - 1024X768 dpi monitors or larger.