Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 20:19:05 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Wanda Cole Subject: More resources for Atlas work Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Here are a few more sources that offer aerial imagery useful for atlasing: MERLIN: www.mdmerlin.net Provided as a collaborative effort of DNR, SHA, USGS et al. MERLIN starts with SPOT satellite imagery and a statewide map on which you click your county of interest. It offers zoom in/out and various data layers, such as wetland and road locations, to help you determine what might be on site. From SPOT, you left click on a site, the USGS topo layer will come up. Same tool features also available on this level. Moving down one more level, if you turn on the quarter quad in which your site is located, you will get a color infra-red aerial image. Most of these county aerials date back to 1993/4 but will very soon be updated to 1998 in 17 counties. While in the topo and CIR layers, you may turn on the real estate layer for the tax map your site is located on. You can find your tax map number by going into www.dat.state.md.us real property search and typing in the street name for your county of interest. You will get a list of property owners on that street, match the address and you know you have the right map. I prefer to do this in the CIR layer as the white lines for property boundaries and parcel info show up better. At any time you can turn on the data layers in the lefthand column for NWI wetlands, SHA centerlines, sensitive species areas, etc. At this time, you cannot print directly from MERLIN. You must do a Print Screen, open your word processing program, and paste the image. You can then edit out the borders and resize the image to print something more useful. I have used Print Screen, Ctl Print Screen, and Shift Print Screen and seem to get the same results. I have used Corel Word Perfect 6/7/8 and Word 2000. I like the editing features of Corel better. Terraserver: www.terraserver.com Provided by USGS This resource works similar to MERLIN however its aerial imagery, which is the same date, is in black and white. This is much sharper and the contrast is useful in looking at stream sediment loads and picking out nuances of change in elevation or moisture (sometimes color is distracting or the pixels get grainy). I don't use this enough to give good tips on how to use (anyone?), but it seems you can zoom in closer and maintain good resolution compared to MERLIN, and the quads pull up faster. Terraserver quads are not limited to MD's. I haven't tried printing from this site yet but I did save an image as a .jpg but when I later opened it, I had trouble trying to enlarge it so I could print something discernible. (anyone?) US Soil Conservation Service: Soil Surveys (by County) The library should have copies of the soil survey maps for each county, and although their aerial image is old, for those of us in rural counties where family farms have remained intact, they may show info that doesn't always appear on topo maps and ADC map books. I use these to locate farm equipment access lanes, small irrigation ponds, ag ditches or ephemeral stream swales, and to get an idea on what habitat may be present that I can't see from the road. e.g., In Caroline County, ag fields occur in huge blocks. From the road, you might not see a wooded ravine or pond in the interior of the farm to know it is there, and the topo might not show it if it wasn't present at the time the topos were flown. If you want a copy of the soil survey, contact your local soil conservation district (probably now listed as the Natural Resource Conservation District) and ask them to send you one. These are expensive to print and in limited supplies. They might only offer to send you the particular page(s) for the area that includes your block. US Fish and Wildlife Service: National Wetland Inventory Maps for MD Possibly in the library. If not the County libraries, try the local colleges or your local Planning and Zoning offices. This data can be pulled up on MERLIN but since you can't print straight from MERLIN, you can photocopy these maps for field use. I don't know that they would help you anymore than the aerial imagery or the soil surveys but if you are looking for a breeder who uses a specific habitat type, these may help. ** Have fun atlasing. (I flushed an adult bald eagle at Mill Creek Sanctuary, which is in my block. Not on a nest, tho.) Wanda Cole Natural Resource Planner Chesapeake Bay Critical Area Commission, Caroline County Atlas Project Coordinator, Maryland Statewide Coordinator for May Count (coming soon!) (aka Recreational Birder and Perennial Volunteer, so don't let the labels fool ya.) :- ) _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================