Google Earth Directions For Clean Watersheds

Google Earth Directions for the Clean Watershed Project Logging into Google Earth

1. Double click on the icon with your cursor to launch the software. There should be an icon on your desktop. If you do not have an icon, please inform the instructor.

Moving Around In Google Earth

2.

The software offers a navigation tool in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. This tool will help you to zoom in or out, change your direction, or tilt your perspective.

3. The top compass lets you change your perspective from overhead to a position along side of it. 4. The bottom compass spins the Earth North, South, East and West. 5. The slide bar beneath the compass lets you zoom in and out. Spend some time zooming in and out. 6. Use your mouse to move around. Try to center your location on the Southeastern United States. When you get there, zoom in on Marietta. Can you see the outline of the city?

Finding Places in Google Earth 7. In the upper left-hand corner, type in your address, and then click on the magnifying glass. The program will zoom in on the location of the address you entered. Any place with a physical street address can be found this way. 8. Google Earth stores data either by street address or by latitude and longitude coordinates. This information can be found at the bottom of your screen. The elevation of a place can also be found in this area. 9. You can also find places of interest such as National Parks or monuments by typing in its name. Type in “Statue of Liberty” and click on the magnifying glass to zoom in on that location. 10. Besides address and places of interest, you can find the exact location your field research area. To do this type in the latitude and longitude of those coordinates. If you don’t know them see your instructor. 11. After you visit a place, it is stored in the temporary folder under the Places Panel. To return to a place, double click on it.

Using Layers in Google Earth

1. Google Earth Pro’s data base comes with a number of data layers that can be turned on and off. These layers are found in the left-hand panel at the bottom.

2. Sometimes this layer is collapsed to give you more viewing pace for the other panels. You can open or close a panel by clicking on the arrow in the title bar for that panel.

3. Once the panel is open, use your cursor and slide the panel up so you can see the available layers. To do this, move your cursor over the darker line just above the arrow to expand the panel. Notice your cursor changes to a bar with arrows. Click and drag up to increase the size of the panel, or drag down to decrease the size.

4. There are layers for roads, buildings, traffic and weather to name just a few. To activate a layer, check the box on the left-hand side of the layer. This will activate it.

5. Some of these layers are actually comprised of many individual layers. To see each layer in a category (or folder), left click on the plus sign to expand that layer. Click on the minus sign to collapse that layer.

Checking the Weather and Traffic for Our Trip

1. Check the weather for our field trip today. To do this, check the box for the weather layer. Give it time to load.

2. Make sure you are over the southeast region of the United States. You can change your location by using your mouse. If you are on the other side of the world, you can get there faster by typing in the name of the city and then clicking on the magnifying glass.

3. Expand the weather layer by clicking on the plus sign. How many individual layers are included in this category?

4. Uncheck the layers: clouds, radar, and information. This will leave you with the forecast layer. To find out more information about a particular region, click on one of the placemarks near the Chattoochee where we will be collecting our water samples. These are the types of placemarks we will be creating after we collect our data this afternoon.

Environmental Layers in Google Earth

1. Google Earth Pro has a number of layers that can be used to teach students about environmental issues. Most of these layers can be found under the Global Awareness category in the layer panel. Some of these layers deal with endangered species, mountain top removal for mining, and the UN’s Atlas of our Changing world.

2. The National Geographic Association also has a layer under the Geographic Web category.

3. To activate one or more of these layers; expand the Global Awareness folder by clicking on the plus sign, and then checking the box.

4. To view a place mark, click on it.

5. Many of these placemarks have images, text, and links to websites where students can learn more about the issue.

Researching Collection Sites Collection sites are determined by time constraints, ease of access, and nearness to possible dumping sites. In order to find the best sites, students can spend some time in Google Earth Pro looking up farms, slaughter houses, paper mills, recycling plants, landfills, major construction sites, waste water treatment plants, and other major industries. These sites can be viewed in Google Earth Pro as placemarks, as shown here. Many of these places contact information and websites are already contained in Google Earth Pro’s database. Students can add information to a placemark. We will be showing you how to create your own placemarks or how to add information to a placemark and then saving the layer later on in the presentation. Compiling Searches Searches can be compiled by checking each layer and then exporting them as a layer (see Saving a Layer). You can then zoom in and see which ones are located on or near a stream that is part of the Chattahoochee Watershed. Once this has been done, students can discuss the best possible collection sites for the project and what pollutants they might find. If time is short, you might want to spend a day or two on a weekend going to the sites yourself to see if they are easy to access and won’t endanger students. Make sure they are not on private property. If they are, contact the company or residence, and let them know what you are doing. You can also take a GPS unit with you to record the exact location. Common Fresh Water Pollutants Associated with Industries 1. Nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium are major components of fertilizers. These pollutants are commonly used in agriculture but may also be found in rivers or creeks that run adjacent to golf courses. Creeks that run though housing developments may also have unacceptable levels of NKP. 2. Coliform Bacteria is a common river pollutant that is associated with sewage treatment plants and waste water overflow problems during storms. 3. Turbidity is a measure of the clarity of the water and therefore is an indicator of the about of Total Suspended Solids (TSS). Increase TSS can be related to construction sites or storm water run-off, which may contain any number of pollutants. 4. Calcium Carbonate is another common fresh water pollutant that is measured with a hardness test. The pollutant comes from concrete production and major construction projects around the city. 5. Chlorine is used in the production of paper and can find its way into creeks and streams that run adjacent to paper mills.

Sample Water Quality Monitoring Data Sheet

Creating a Folder to Store Your Placemark(s)

12. The Clean Watersheds project’s goal is to create a composite layer of various schools water quality data so the students can look at broad themes related to water quality and usage. Therefore it is important to keep each schools’ data separated into folders that can easily be added to our composite layer. 13. To create a folder to store your placemarks, move your mouse over the “My Places” icon in the places panel and then right-click with your mouse. 14. Choose “Add” from the menu and then move your mouse toward the arrow for the pop-out window. 15. Choose the “Folder” option. 16. Give the Folder a title and also include your name (for example – Nose Creek – Thomas). This will help the teacher know which placemark belongs to which student. 17. If you are a school with many test sites, or many placemarks, name your folder with the name of your school and the semester (for example – The Walker School Spring 2009).

Creating a Placemark

18. Click on the yellow push pin in the tool bar at the top of your screen. A yellow push pin will appear along with a dialog box where we will be entering information later. 19. Click and drag the push pin to the location you want. If you can’t see it directly, you can use the navigation tools to move around or the zoom tool to zoom in or out until you are at your test site. 20. Type in a title for your placemark, such as “Nose Creek Spring 2009” and click OK. 21. You should now see your placemark. If it’s not in the right location and you want to move it, right click on the yellow push pin and choose “Properties from the menu. Once the dialog box is open you can use your mouse to move the placemark to where you want it.

Adding the Clean Watersheds Template to Your Placemark

22. Open a web browser, such as Internet Explorer and type in the address for the Clean Watersheds Project in the address bar of your browser: http://cleanwatersheds.wikispaces.com 23. On the right-hand side of your screen under “Resources”, click on the “Documents” page link. 24. Scroll down and look for the “Placemark Template Code” file and double click on it to open it. 25. If it asks you if you want to save it or open it, choose “Open with” and choose Microsoft Word from the drop down list. Then click OK. 26. Copy and paste the code from the Word document into the place mark. 27. Click OK to save the template to your icon. 28. Double click on the icon to see what the template looks like. There is a banner which ties together each placemark and gives them a common appearance. There is also a place for you to write about your project, add the results of your data and also to add an image. The image could be of you or a friend taking a water quality test, or you could place an image of a graph in the picture place holder.

Changing the Placeholder Text in the Template 29. If you navigated away from the “Documents” page of the Clean Watersheds project return to that page by clicking on the “Documents” link on the left-side of the wikispace. 30. On the documents page, scroll down and open the file “Clean Watersheds Template Guide”. 31. As with opening the file in the last section, if it asks you if you want to save it or open it, choose “Open with” and choose Microsoft Word from the drop down list. Then click OK. 32. When the file opens, take a couple of minutes to review it. This document explains some of the code and shows you where to substitute your text with the place holder text. Items on the right in the boxes give you directions on what to do. Arrows point from the boxes to the text where you should substitute your information. A section of this document is shown to the right. 33. If you have any questions about where to place your text, you should ask your instructor. 34. We will be editing each sections and then saving it. Once you have replaced the text for a section, click OK on the placemark.

Adding Images to a Placemark

35. To reference an image in your placemark it must already be stored on the internet somewhere. You can upload images to photosharing sites such as Flickr (http://www.flicrk.com) or Photobucket (http://www.photobucket.com). If you have a project wiki from another site, such as the Walker Water project wiki (http://walkerwaterworld.pbwiki.com/) you can also upload your images there. Ask your teacher where the images from your test site are stored online. 36. If your image is already online somewhere, open an Internet browser and navigate to where the image is stored online. 37. Once there, right click on the image and copy the location code. Make sure to get the entire code. It should end in .jpg. 38. If you closed the placemark from the previous section, open it by right clicking on the icon and choosing “Properties” from the menu. 39. Scroll down to near the bottom of the code and look for the highlighted text shown here to the right.

is XHTML code that stands for image source. 40. Replace the text between the quotation marks (“) that ends with .jpg with the location code for your image. Don’t worry about trying to adjust the size of your image so it will fit in the placemark. The template has been programmed to adjust your picture to the appropriate size. 41. Click OK to close the placemark. 42. Open your placemark to see if the image is there.

Downloading and Installing the Custom Icon

43. If you navigated away from the “Documents” page of the Clean Watersheds project return to that page by clicking on the “Documents” link on the left-side of the wikispace. 44. Scroll down the page and look for the custom icon as shown to the right. Right click on this icon and choose “Save Image As” from the menu. 45. Save the icon to your folder on the school network. Your teacher can show you how to do this. 46. If you closed your placemark from the previous exercise, right click on it to open the properties dialog box. 47. Click on the icon selector in the upper right corner of the placemark dialog box. Google Earth gives you a number of built in icons to choose from. In this exercise we are going to add a custom icon, though. 48. At the bottom of the icon selector, click on “Add Custom Icon”. 49. Click “Browse” and navigate to where you stored the custom icon for the Clean Watersheds project. 50. Select the icon and click “Open”. 51. Click OK to upload the custom icon to Google Earth.

Saving Your Information to Your Computer

52. The placemarks you create are stored on your computer and not on Google’s server. It is therefore necessary to save the placemarks you create to your folder on the schools’ network. 53. Before we save our placemark (or layer), make sure that any placemarks you created are in the folder. If they are not, then click on them and drag them into the folder you created earlier. 54. Collapse the folder by clicking on the + sign next to the folder. 55. Make sure there is a “Check Mark” in the box next to the folder. This means that all objects in the folder have been selected. If there is not, then click on the box to the left of the folder until a check mark appear. NOTE: This is the most common way students loose their information. 56. Click on the folder to highlight it. 57. In the File menu, choose “Save” and then “Save Place As”. Because your placemark(s) are in a folder the program considers the folder to be one object. 58. Navigate to your folder on the school network by clicking on “Browse Folders”. Then click “Save”.