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Introduction to GIS software
There are a wide variety of GIS software packages available. Some of these software packages
are freely available for you to download and could be used in your classroom. ArcGIS Explorer is one of
those freely available GIS software packages.
Objective: The objective of this tutorial is to familiarize you with some basic functions of ArcGIS
Explorer.
Please note that this tutorial does not attempt to give you a complete introduction to all basic
functions in ArcGIS Explorer. It is rather a starting point for you to explore some more of the
functionality that is offered by ArcGIS Explorer for some of your specific geospatial data analysis
needs/geospatial classroom activity.
Note: This tutorial is written for PCs running Windows 7 and 8, so some parts of the tutorial might not
work for you if you are using a Mac or running a different version of Windows.
Data: All data you need for this tutorial are in the MOSS graduate student Dropbox/GIS data folder. To
access the Dropbox folder, type the following in your web-browser:
https://www.dropbox.com/login
Next, type in the following username and password (see figure below):
Username: [email protected]
Password: pay3tt3l (make sure you type the “l” at the end of the password)
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Important: After you accessed the Dropbox folder, please download all files somewhere onto your hard-
drive so you can use them for this tutorial.
1) Installing ArcGIS Explorer on your own computer
Unfortunately, ArcGIS Explorer only runs on PCs. If you have a PC, you can download ArcGIS
Explorer for free from the following ESRI website:
(http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/download.html). For those of you using a MOSS
computer, ArcGIS should already be installed and ready to use.
2) Start ArcGIS Explorer
To start ArcGIS Explorer simply double click on the ArcGIS Explorer icon on your desktop.
The following window will appear:
Select Associate KML with ArcGIS Explorer.
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You should now see a satellite image of the world that looks something like the image shown below:
If you do not see the satellite image of the world, do the following:
1) Go to the following website: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/communities/arcgis-explorer-desktop/
2) Select ‘World Imagery’
3) Click on ‘Open’
4) After you click ‘Open’, a window will pop-up asking you if you do want to open or save the file.
Simply click ‘Open’ and the satellite image of the world should now be visible.
Above the satellite image, you will see the ArcGIS Explorer ribbon with the Home and Display tab.
To navigate to the McCall area (or the area you are interested in), pick the Home tab on the ribbon, click
on the Find button and type in “McCall, ID” or the geographic coordinates of the location you are looking
for.
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2) Reading in field data and displaying it
In this step you will learn how to read GPS coordinates into ArcGIS Explorer. Let’s imagine you
identified 4 different plant species in Ponderosa State Park and you used your GPS to determine their
location in the Park. You also collected some soil moisture information at the location where you found
the plants. This is the datasheet you created:
To read the data into ArcGIS Explorer, you first have to create a spreadsheet of your data. To do
this, open Excel (Start/All programs/Microsoft Office) and create a spreadsheet that has at least the
following three columns: location (your first data entry would be “1” for location one, your second data
entry would be “2” for location two, and so forth), latitude, and longitude. You can also add additional
columns that contain information associated with a given coordinate (e.g. plant species name, soil
moisture information). After you created the spreadsheet it might look something like this:
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Next, save your file as a .txt (tab delimited file). To do this, click on the Microsoft Windows icon
in the upper left hand corner of the Excel screen and click on Save as…/other formats. This will bring up
a window that allows you to save your spreadsheet in different file formats. You want to save your file as
a .txt file. To do this, find the Save as type pull-down menu and select Text (Tab delimited).
After you click OK a warning window will pop-up. Click OK. Another warning window will pop-
up. Select Yes. Now we are ready to read the text file you just created into ArcGIS Explorer.
To do this, pick the Home tab on the ribbon, click on the Add Content pull-down menu, and click on Add
text file … .
A window will appear that allows you to navigate to the text file you created earlier. Once you
have located your GPS file, specify the file delimiter (if it is a .txt file it is tab delimited so select "Tab")
and click Next. In the following window you will have to select the columns in your GPS file that contain
the latitude and longitude information as well as the coordinate system (most likely WGS-84) of the data
you collected. Also, you have to select the column that contains the title field (e.g. the columns that
contains the unique name or number you assigned to each of your GPS points. In our case that is the
“Location” column). Finally, select All Fields in the Description Field dropdown menu.
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You should now see the locations of all four plant species on the map marked by a pin. To get some more
information about the locations (e.g., the soil moisture or plant species information), simply click on the
pins.
3) Importing GIS data layers and shapefiles
Many GIS data that could assist in the interpretation and analysis of your geospatial data are
already freely available online. So a good place to start looking for geospatial datasets before you go out
in the field to collect data might be to search online. A good place to start looking for GIS data for Idaho
is the Inside Idaho website (http://inside.uidaho.edu). For this part of the tutorial, please open the Inside
Idaho website (http://inside.uidaho.edu) and click on the Popular data in the Find Data dropdown menu.
This will bring you to the page shown below that provides an overview of the different types of datasets
that are available (e.g. datasets related to climate, geoscience, transportation etc.)
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For this tutorial, you will take a look at some precipitation data for Idaho. To get these data, click
on the Idaho Climate Data hyperlink. A new window will appear that lists different datasets. Before you
download any of the datasets listed, it is good practice to look at the data description that provides some
valuable information about the data (e.g. what data type you are dealing with, data description,
geographic coordinate system associated with the data etc.). To get this information about the data you are
about to download, click on the Precipitation for Idaho; Mean Annual (1961-90) hyperlink. Take a
moment and browse through the data description. You might wonder why you need all this information
about the data. For example, it is important to know what coordinate system the dataset is in if you are
planning to overlay it with other GIS data layers. If it does not have the same coordinate system as your
other layers, you have to transform it to the coordinate system of your other layers. Otherwise, you would
not be able to lay it on top of your other GIS data layers (Note: It is beyond this tutorial to discuss how to
transform GIS data layers from one coordinate system to another).
After you have familiarized yourself with the data, pick the Home tab on the ArcGIS Explorer
ribbon, click on the Add Content pull-down menu, click on ArcGIS layers... and navigate to the GIS Files
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folder containing the pre-downloaded precipitation layer file (see file ‘Mean Annual Precipitation 1961-
90.lyr’ downloaded from the Dropbox/GIS data folder). You should now see a precipitation map for
Idaho shown below:
Note: If you are using your personal computer you can download the layer file by clicking on ESRI Layer
File (lyr) from the Inside Idaho website. Once you have downloaded and saved the dataset to your
computer, you can access the data in the same manner as above: pick the Home tab on the ArcGIS
Explorer ribbon, click on the Add Content pull-down menu, click on ArcGIS layers ..., and navigate to the
folder where you saved the data. To see the legend of the map, right click on
in the Contents window and click on Show Legend.
The precipitation information for Idaho in the GIS layers you just opened is stored in grid cells,
similar to information stored in a digital image (Fig. 1). This type of data is called raster data. Another
type of GIS data you might frequently come across when you are working with GIS is called vector data.
Vector data are points, lines, and polygons (Fig. 1).
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Figure 1. Illustration of raster and vector data (Source of illustration: http://www.automation-
drive.com/raster-data)
This means you already worked with vector data in part 2 of this tutorial when you imported GPS
locations (or points) into ArcGIS Explorer. Now, we want to create a map that shows the location of
MOSS, the Nokes Experimental forest (which is an experimental forest approximately 3 miles southeast
of MOSS), and Ponderosa State Park. To do this, zoom into the McCall area. Next, pick the Home tab on
the ArcGIS Explorer ribbon, click on the Add Content pull-down menu, click on Shapefiles ... (Note: a
shapefile is a vector data format), and navigate to the Nokes and IDPR_Managed_Land folders (see files
downloaded from the Dropbox/GIS data folder) that contain the area information for the Nokes
Experimental Forest and Ponderosa State Park, respectively. Now, simply click on the .shp file in each of
the folders and the area associated with the Nokes Experimental Forest and the Ponderosa State Park
should appear (please note that the IDPR_Managed_Land shapefile contains all areas in Idaho managed
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by Idaho State Parks and Recreation – only the area that covers the peninsula reaching into Payette Lake
and at the northern end of Payette Lake is associated with Ponderosa State Park).
You will see that both the area covering the Nokes Experimental Forest and Ponderosa State Park do have
the same color. To give the Nokes Experimental Forest a different color, click on the little arrow in the
Contents menu next to the nokes_boundary.
Next, right click on nokes_boundary and go to Symbol and chose a color you want to use for the Nokes
Experimental Forest.
OK – now we mapped the area associated with Ponderosa State Park and with the Nokes Experimental
Forest, but what about MOSS? To map the area associated with MOSS, zoom into the area.
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Next, choose the Area tool from the Home tab ...
… and trace the MOSS boundary by clicking on its corners.
After you have traced the entire area, simply double click. Voilà – now you have mapped the Nokes
Experimental Forest, Ponderosa State Park, and MOSS.
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Now, we want to make a map with a legend. To do this, we first want to change the names in our
Contents window to “MOSS”, “Nokes Experimental Forest”, and “Ponderosa State Park”. To do this,
simply right click on the current names and select Rename. This then allows you to rename the names
associated with our three shapefiles.
Next, you can place the contents window showing your legend anywhere you want within your map by
simply clicking on it and holding down your left mouse button.
You can also adjust the size of the legend window by putting your mouse on the corner of the Contents
window.
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Now, find the prt scr key on your keyboard …
… press the prt scr key to take a screenshot, and then open Paint (under Accessories ).
After you open Paint, simply right click within the white area and select paste. You should now
see your map within Paint but also some information you do not want. To just select the map area you
want to show, click on the Select tool on the Paint menu bar that allows you to identify the area you are
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interested in. Make sure you select the north arrow in the lower left corner, the legend, and the scale bar
in the lower right corner since every good map should have this information.
Once you have selected the area, right click and select copy, press Ctrl+N, select Don’t Save in the
window that pops up, right click within the white area and select paste. Finally, go to Save as … and save
your map as a JPEG picture on your hard-drive.
Make sure you save the map image in a location where you can later find it. Now, navigate to the folder
where you saved your map image and open it.
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Congratulations! Here is the first map you made with ArcGIS Explorer. Make sure that it has a legend,
north arrow, and a scale bar.
Task:
Please open and display the USA topo map and telemetry data in ArcGIS Explorer (see ‘Telemetry data’
folder downloaded from the Dropbox/GIS data folder). We will be using the telemetry data and topo map
for further analysis during our ‘Wildlife day’ (i.e., day 5 of the Ecology class) so please make sure you
are able to display both in ArcGIS Explorer before the ‘Wildlife day’.
Based on what you learned in this tutorial, you should be able to display the telemetry data in ArcGIS
Explorer. To open the topo map, please do the following:
Go to the following website:
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ff92473e1dd146f38dfaf09ff270c7f3
Select ‘USA Topo Maps’
Click on ‘Open’
After you click ‘Open’, a window will pop-up asking you if you do want to open or save the file.
Simply click ‘Open’ and the USA topo map should be loaded. To display the topo map, make
sure it is checked in the content window on the lower left and all the other content is unchecked
(see figure below).
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5) Helpful tutorials on tools that might help in the analysis of your data
How to query your data (http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisexplorer/1500/en/query_editor.htm)
6) Helpful resources
To learn more about ArcGIS Explorer (e.g. see some demos), go to the ArcGIS Explorer website:
http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/explorer/index.html.
Disclaimer: Please e-mail any suggestions of how to potentially improve this document to Jan Eitel
(jeitel@ uidaho.edu). Use of trade names does not constitute an official endorsement by the McCall
Outdoor Science School.
Important: If you used a MOSS computer for this tutorial, please make sure you delete all the files you
created from the computer after you are done with the tutorial. Thanks!
