This demonstration visualization system is designed to let you think visually about the trawl data collected from the trawl forms. The data is available for review in a tabular format within the trawl reports page. The Watershed-to-Ocean Initiative tool, developed at The Ocean Project, presents geospatial data layers on a virtual globe. You can launch the Save The Bay version of this tool at: http://theoceanproject.org/stb/alletta_data.php. The tool runs best with Java 6 installed in a Web browser that is Java-enabled. We recommend that you update your browser's Java version to run version 1.6 or later.
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When you launch the tool, you see a virtual globe appear between the Save The Bay banner (top) and the tool control panel (bottom). The globe is provided by the NASA Java World Wind team and a community programmers. The globe is interactive. Use your mouse and keyboard to move around the globe. Dragging with the left mouse button on the globe lets you move around the planet by altering the latitude and longitude (right and left arrow keys on your keyboard let you do the same). If your mouse has a right-mouse button, you can drag on the globe with the right-mouse button to change the tilt of your viewpoint relative to the planet surface (Page Up and Page Down keys do the same). If your mouse has a middle button or scroll wheel, you can drag on the globe with that button to change your current altitude to move closer or further away from the planet surface (+ and - keys do the same).
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The location button on the bottom control panel lets you move to convenient views of the whole bay or the Save The Bay headquarters in Providence. You can see the Bay from various Altitudes (10km being the view from a plane and 100km being a view from a satellite). You can also see the bay by looking directly North, East, South, or West. Above, we've clicked on the Narragansett Bay button to transport ourselves to a convenient view of the bay. We see eight red boat icons indicative of eight popular starting points for Save The Bay trawl cruises. Click on any red boat with the left mouse button to see details on the drainage area relavent to cruises from that location. Be patient when clicking on any item in the tool since often the data is accessed via a database over the Web. There is no reason to double-click anywhere within the tool.
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Clicking on the upper-right most red trawl cruise boat icon returns a visual outline of the Taunton watershed basin because the pour point for the Taunton is close to the Mount Hope Bay location of the cruise starting point. Water quality at this location is dependent on the quality of the fresh water coming into the bay from that land coverage area. You can remove the green watershed outline by clicking on the Clear Watershed button at the far right of the top row of the tool control panel. The control panel lets you investigate water drainage from any zip code within the Narragansett Bay watershed. Click on the dynamic zip code scroll box to choose a zip code of interest. The list expands so you can scroll to a zip code and click to select it. |
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As an example, the zip code 02356 above. Sub-watersheds in the area are presented as well as a locator for the center of the zip code as determined by the US Postal Service. To see the drainage to the sea from that zip code location, use your right mouse button to click on the zip code annotation bubble and the path to the sea appears in light blue. You can remove watershed outlines and zip codes at any time by clicking on the Clear Zip and Clear Watershed buttons respectively. Clicking on a |
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You can use the Trawl Partner control to request a view of trawl locations for any cruise that has taken place. Above, we choose the Classical High School partner from the Trawl Partner dynamic scroll box and three trawl locations are identified by green boat icons. These icons can be cleared using the Clear button to the right of the Trawl Partner control. You can load all available trawl cruise locations by selecting the first All choice from the dynamic scroll box. Then, you can click on each green boat icon to see information about that trawl as determined by the Save The Bay staff.
The height control lets you exaggerate the vertical height of the ground plane on the planet. Exaggeration is not very useful in a flat watershed that has little resolution in its height data. Try playing with the height exaggeration in other areas of the world to get a sense of it. Higher resolution data for Narragansett Bay will be coming to the tool in the upcoming months. |
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The Ocean Project version of the demonstration has checkboxes available for you to select to see examples of additional data layers available for watersheds. Select the Watersheds checkbox to see the subwatersheds colored for the Narragansett Bay watershed region.
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Select the Water Temperature checkbox to see a typical distribution of Narragansett Bay water temperatures on an early July day. Deselect a checkbox to deselect that data layer. |
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