Carolina bay Survey Process Instructions - Step 1
The first resource I'd like to offer is a "starter" kmz file. The sample is for a spatial area 1/4 degree latitude by 1/4 degree longitude. (~23 x ~27.5 km), which I refer to as an "Octant", as it is 1/8 th of a USGS 100K quadrant, and 4 times the size of a USGS 24 K Quadrant. There are too few of the former (~60) and too many of the latter (~2,000) get the work unit granularity that seemed practical to distribute, manage, and make measurement aggregations on.
137320.kmz
So the first step is: can you access that file from the page here, and can you get it to open in Google Earth? Next, the file is available on line using this LINK ; does that work?
The link can also be access using the Google Earth browser plug-in on THIS web page. The single RED marker is linked to this 137320 Octant. Clicking on it will bring up a balloon with a link in it to retrieve the KMZ file.
After loading, the left panel on Google Earth should show these items:
Turn them on and off to with either the check box or the push-button and see what they control. The LiDAR is in two version. The "_part" version drops out the LiDAR overlay function when the user zooms in close to the ground ( < 3km view altitude), allowing the viewing of standard GE satellite imagery for comparison purposes.
There should be a number of placemarks on the screen that go on and off by toggling the "Bay Elements..." folder visibility. Click on any one of those, and a balloon pop up appears describing the meta information for the bay. If you select the link shown there, an overlay will load showing the previously-submitted oval landform shape for the bay. This is the item we will be using to measure any new bays, and be checking for quality control purposes.
Try clicking the "Load Overlay..." link. The item should show up in your temporary places listing.
Select the overlay icon in the left panel, left click and select the last item in the pop up: “Get Info” (Mac) or “Properties” (Win).
The overlay will activate with drag-able sides and corners, and a rotation handle. Our task will be to re-size the overlay and rotate it to fit this bay, for quality checking.
When activated, Google Earth will present a dialogue box with information about this overlay element. A control is present here to adjust the transparency of the overlay. The contents of the Description panel displays the HTML code which appears when the overlay is selected. This information is calculated when the original overlay was processed by a specialized program written for the survey.
Dismiss the dialogue box using the “OK” button.
Using the right mouse button, the overlay can be copied, and then pasted back into the Temporary Places, creating another overlay to work with.
The new copy can be selected and dragged by the center cross and used to measure a different, unmarked bay.
Move the overlay on top of a prospective bay that has not yet been measured, and use the rotation handle and the box controls to position the bay as desired.
Change the name of this overlay to “... _new”, using the dialogue box. This will annotate it as a new item to be processed.
Using the right mouse button on one of the new overlays, add a folder element to the Temporary Places.
Provide a name in the dialogue box, including your name and the “Octant Number”. Any edited overlays, or new ones, need to be dragged into this new folder.
Right-clicking on the folder in the DOM will bring up a file save dialogue box. Navigate to an appropriate location and save the file for further processing using the Survey Calculator program on the Tools Page.