KGS Maps, Data and Publications Website Updates

Databases, Maps, and Publications Search Updated!

2008-06-13T10:08:00.002-04:00

The KGS Databases, Maps, and Publications search website has undergone an upgrade, and you will probably notice a few changes with the design and functionality.

Let us know if you find any bugs or issues. You can either provide feedback by clicking on the "site feedback" link at the top of the main pages and filling out the anonymous (if you prefer) form, or by emailing doug curl at doug(at)uky.edu

Some of the biggest changes:
- The name has changed to "KGS Databases, Maps, and Publications".

- Cosmetically, there isn't a big change on the main page and the
search pages, but the pages that describe each search have changed
from 2 columns to one column, with more focused info on each search type.

- Some of the search results will have a "frozen header" so you can scroll through the results with the header in place.

- for all searches that use quads and counties: you can now select
multiple counties/quads

- for any search that allows entering text (like pubs keywords or oil and
gas operators): you can use the standard asterix (*) for wildcard
searching. These textual searches are also wildcard by default (as they were before).

- Oil and Gas and Well Sample/Cores: operator and farm is now a search
limit instead of a primary search parameter. So you can search for,
say, a quad and an operator. You can also search the entire database
and then use this or other search parameters.

- Many of the info pages (links that provide more info about something
on the site), now open in a "floating window" above the page instead
of a popup - these are closed by clicking outside the window or click
the "close" link. A link is also provided on these windows to allow
you to strip these off into separate window. The hope is that the info pages come up to users a little quicker and cleaner.

- If a map view is available on the search results for the location of
a site, 2 links are now provided: one to the relevant IMS service, and
another to a "quick map" which is a terrain view, google map embedded
in a floating window...it's very quick loading, and you can pan and
zoom this map (like google maps), but it only shows the location and
the geography that google maps provide. This might be useful for many
users who don't need the full IMS service (and it may cut down on IMS
load as well - a win-win for all!).

- the search results have a cleaned up look, and paging and sorting is
done without refreshing the entire page. Also, the download link is
provided above and below the results.

- many of the search results have been cleaned up to consolidate some info into one column (like county, quad, etc) - this was done to improve the horizontal real-estate which can take up a lot of room on a screen.

- there has been a major overhaul of the coal production page.

- a feedback form has been added (as described above).

We would really appreciate your comments on this new site - please let use know if you come across any problems or if you would like to see any additional features. And of course, you can always let us know how much you like it!

Publications Search, Data Searching, and Map service downtime this weekend.

2008-06-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

Starting at 5:00 pm EST, Friday (6/13/08) both the publications and data searching services and the map services (including the KGSGeoPortal and Geologic Map Service) will be unavailable due to maintenance. These services will be back online and fully functional by 8:00 am EST, Monday (6/16/08).

KGS apologizes for the inconvenience.

Use and help evaluate a new version of the KGS Data and Pubs Website!

2008-05-29T16:18:00.006-04:00

The Maps, Databases, and Pubs Search website will be updated soon with some significant design and functionality changes, but the new version needs to be evaluated. You are invited to use and evaluate the "beta" version of this site before it replaces the current version. It can be found here:

http://kgsweb.uky.edu/main.asp

Please take a look, and most importantly, let us know if you find any
bugs or issues. Also, if you don't like something, or have some additional ideas,
this is also a good time to let us know. You can either provide feedback by clicking on the "site feedback" link at the top of the main pages and filling out the anonymous (if you prefer) form, or by emailing doug curl at doug(at)uky.edu

FYI: we tried to preserve all the original URL's for the data and publications pages, so that when this new version replaces the current one, none of the old URL's will change (say, if you linked to from another page to the
oil and gas page or water search page). Now, if you linked to a
particular search (by sending info via the URL), these should still
work in most cases, but you may experience issues with the coal production and the core and samples searches, which are significantly different. Also, none of the data columns or data types that are returned by any of the search pages is different.

Some of the biggest changes:
- Cosmetically, there isn't a big change on the main page and the
search pages, but the pages that describe each search have changed
from that 2 column look to one column - following the current format of the groundwater search pages.

- for all searches that use quads and counties: you can now select
multiple counties/quads

- for any search that allows entering text (like pubs keywords or oil and
gas operators): you can use the standard asterix (*) for wildcard
searching

- Oil and Gas and Well Sample/Cores: operator and farm is now a search
limit instead of a primary search parameter. So you can search for,
say, a quad and an operator. You can also search the entire database
and then use this or other search parameters.

- Many of the info pages (links that provide more info about something
on the site), now open in a "floating window" above the page instead
of a popup - these are closed by clicking outside the window or click
the "close" link. A link is also provided on these windows to allow
you to strip these off into separate window. The hope is that the info pages come up to users a little quicker and cleaner.

- If a map view is available on the search results for the location of
a site, 2 links are now provided: one to the relevant IMS service, and
another to a "quick map" which is a terrain view, google map embedded
in a floating window...it's very quick loading, and you can pan and
zoom this map (like google maps), but it only shows the location and
the geography that google maps provide. This might be useful for many
users who don't need the full IMS service (and it may cut down on IMS
load as well - a win-win for all!).

- the search results have a cleaned up look, and paging and sorting is
done without refreshing the entire page. Also, the download link is
provided above and below the results.

- many of the search results have been cleaned up to consolidate some info into one column (like county, quad, etc) - this was done to improve the horizontal real-estate which can take up a lot of room on a screen.

- there has been a major overhaul of the coal production page.

- the feedback form has been added (as described above) and will remain as a permanent link when the site is in production.

We would really appreciate your comments on this new site - please let use know if you come across any problems or if you would like to see any additional features. And of course, you can always let us know how much you like it!

new national basemap layers added to map services

2008-02-13T17:47:00.005-05:00

If you use any of the map services, you should notice that 3 new map layers have been added:

state boundaries
major cities/towns in other states
major highways in other states

These new layers were obtained from the USGS National Atlas.

The symbology of the roads and highways has also been updated. The line colors have been lightened up (in order to help distinguish roads from geologic features) and the lines have been dashed.

We hope to have links to metadata for all the layers that are available on our map services to be provided soon.

use the KYGeoPortal to get DEM's

2007-08-28T15:29:00.000-04:00

A new feature that provides links to 7.5-minute quadrangle DEMs has been added to the KYGeoPortal (and is also available through the KYMaps link on several Kentucky internet map services). These are the same DEMs that are available through the Kentucky Division of Geographic Information website (http://dgi.ky.gov/data/elevation.htm), but this is another method of getting you to a DEM of interest.

When you are zoomed to an area of interest on the KYGeoPortal or a map service with the KYMaps link, go to the Portal Links (or simply open the KYMaps link), and under the Basemaps category there is a new service called "DEM Dowloads". Expand this menu and a list of the 7.5-minute quadrangles in the current view extent will show up. Adjacent to each quadrangle name are links to .zip files of the 30 feet post spacing (10 Meter) DEMs in Kentucky State Plane North and South Coordinate Systems (if available) and Kentucky Single Zone. Click the link to the download, and you will be prompted to open or save the file. Choose "Save" to save it to your hard drive.

changes to the KGSGeoPortal

2007-08-21T10:01:00.000-04:00

Some cosmetic changes have recently been made to the KGSGeoPortal and related functions (like the links seen via the KYMAPS button which is on various map services). None of the functionality has changed, and so you don't need to change any code to link up to KYMAPS or any of the other KGSGeoPortal tools if you are doing that from your map service.

Anyway, the changes you'll notice are these:

added a link from a new "?" icon in front of each service link to the "home page" or, in most cases, the KYGeoNet page that describes the service. Also, if you mouse over that icon, you'll see a brief description of the service - if this is super-annoying, please let me know. I tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible!
add a key icon which indicates whether the service is something you need to register for. Click the icon, and you'll go to the registration page for that service.
spruced up the "all service descriptions" list (you can get to this from a link on the portal) - so that all the services are described with a link to their "home page", along with a brief description, etc... You can also sort this list by name, agency, etc...

Anyway, my hope is that these make it much clearer to the user about who developed the services and what type of data they show.

"cached" full map extents on the geologic map service

2007-07-12T12:44:00.000-04:00

I have been working to remedy the issue of the long load times for viewing the full extent when one first enters the Geologic Map Service. Previously, if you went straight to the map service, it would load up fairly quickly since I "cached" the initial geologic map view, but if you added a LayoutID to the URL (for say viewing the lithologic map, KPI, Coal, or Petroleum map), you would need to wait the time it took to draw the entire state - which could take a minute or longer (a long time if you are sitting in front of a screen). So, I implemented "caching" for the initial views of these different layouts. So, you can provide the following links to the public (which have the appropriate LayoutID assigned), and it will open the map service to the map layout fairly quickly.

These are the URL's that have caching enabled for the initial view - these are the links you would want to provide users in, say, a link from a webpage:

Oil and Gas Layout:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=2

OR:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=596

KPI Layout:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=31

OR:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=196

Coal Layout:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=33

OR:

target="_blank">http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=192

Litho Layout:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=3

OR

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp?LayoutID=244

Caveats:

1) Right now, if you click the "zoom to full extent" button on the map, at this time, the map service will completely redraw - so it'll take some time - I'm gonna work on this - seems like an easy fix. (RESOLVED:)This is the same case with the "Select a Map Layout" Links - if you click one and the map is at the full extent - should be an easy resolve.

2) (RESOLVED:) If you send any sort of extent to the service (say from the KGSGeoPortal), even if you were at the full extent of the state, the map service will completely redraw - the only workaround is to not send any extent in the URL - this is what triggers the code to load a cached image. This may be solved by solving #1 above...

3) the date on the image is the last time the cached image was updated.

Limit Oil and Gas Records by Depth

2007-04-04T16:17:00.000-04:00

Users now have the ability to limit results on the Oil and Gas tabular search by well depth. You can now limit the returned records to those wells that penetrate Cambrian or older, or a specific depth can be entered (to limit the records to those wells with that depth and deeper).

NEW ADDITION! Groundwater-Quality Map Service

2007-04-04T16:03:00.000-04:00

An interactive web map service to view the KGS groundwater-quality data has just been added to the suite of map services offered by KGS. The site for this new service can be found at:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSWaterQual/viewer.asp

Or it can be found by following the "Search for Groundwater Information" link (and then clicking "Groundwater-Quality Data Map Service") under "Criteria-Based Search" on the KGS Maps, Publications, and Databases website. It can also be found as a link from the KGSGeoPortal (i.e. users can use the portal to zoom in on an area of interest, and then view that selected area on the groundwater-quality map service).

Users can specify one analyte at a time to be mapped, and choose from a list of 32 layers to display including geology, watershed boundaries, roads, orthophotography and sinkholes. A tutorial on how to find and start using this map service can be found here:

http://kgsweb.uky.edu/datasearching/water/tutorial_qualityMap.htm

Please be advised that this site is still in the development or "beta" phase, and frequent changes and updates can be expected.

JUST ADDED! Groundwater-Quality Data Search

2007-02-06T10:47:00.000-05:00

A new groundwater-quality data search (information about the data) has just been added to the suite of tabular data searching services offered by KGS. The site for this new search can be found at:

http://kgsweb.uky.edu/DataSearching/Water/WaterQualSearch.asp

Or it can be found by following the "Search for Water Well & Spring Records" link (and then clicking "Search for Groundwater-Quality Data") under "Criteria-Based Search" on the KGS Maps, Publications, and Databases website.

The search page for groundwater-quality looks and behaves similar to the other KGS criteria-based search pages. You can return records in the water quality database for the entire state, by quadrangle(s) or counties, by coordinates with a radius distance, or by KGS AKGWA Number; and you can limit the results by sampling date. For the above search parameters, you have the option to select from 38 analytes to return, which are broken into 5 groups. And you can choose to display the results as either all the samples (for the chosen analytes) for each location, or you may choose to display a summary report of the samples (for the chosen analytes) for each location.

Once the records are displayed, you then have the option to download the results into a text or Microsoft Excel file.

Oil and Gas Data Search Updates

2007-01-31T12:57:00.000-05:00

Several updates have recently been made to the Oil and Gas tabular data search. These include:

(Hopefully) faster results and fewer timeout issues with data searches.
Addition of the ability to limit search results by one or more of the following criteria (some of these were already available): samples, core, production data, DjVu records, scanned or any e-logs, completion data, and deepest pay data.
If a well has core available, a link is provided to a brief report about the core.
And, as mentioned is a previous post, production data reports have also been recently added.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please let use know!

JUST ADDED! Oil and Gas Production Data

2007-01-25T11:44:00.000-05:00

Non-confidential production data for oil and gas wells has been added to the criteria-based, tabular oil and gas data results (http://kgsweb.uky.edu/DataSearching/OilGas/OGsearch.asp). If a well has production data to view, a link appears in the "Well Sample Report/Production Data" field. The link will open a popup web page displaying the well information and the production data (year, month, Gas Mcf/month, Gas status, Oil bbl/month, and Oil status) by month for that well. A link to download the data into a delimited or an excel file is also provided.

KGSGeoPortal Tools Suite

2007-01-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

There are several "tools" that are part of the KGSGeoPortal. These were developed as part of the KGSGeoPortal, which can be found at:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeoPortal/KGSGeoPortal.asp

These tools are intended to be linked off of other Kentucky ArcIMS sites (or any site with Kentucky geography) in order to do KGSGeoPortal-like functions such as zoom to an area or coordinate of interest, ID coordinates, or open another ArcIMS site to the viewed extent. These tools are not intended to be stored on your own server, instead, with a little bit of javascript and html you can link to these from your own ArcIMS site.

The following is my attempt to clarify how these are to be used (with some suggested code for implementing on your own site), if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please contact doug curl, doug(at)uky.edu at the Kentucky Geological Survey:

Tool #1: "KGSGeoPortal: Links to Maps and Databases" (or Mini-Portal). This tool you may see on some sites with an icon that looks like this:

The idea of this tool is to provide the same links that the stand-alone KGSGeoPortal has, so users can quickly jump between ArcIMS sites to the same extent that they are viewing. Try it out here (zoom in on the map, click the KYMAPS icon at the bottom right, and then select another site to view).

This tool was designed so that any ArcIMS site in Kentucky - in any of the most popular projections and datums - can have this linked from their site. In order to include this tool on your site you need to create a link from your ArcIMS site which sends, to this tool as a popup, the bounding coordinates for the area you are viewing, and the projection, datum, and units for your site (so the coordinates can be converted to other coordinates):

The resulting URL that your site would send should look like this (this is an EXAMPLE of a site that is sending some coordinates from a NAD83, Geographic, Decimal Degree Site) - be sure to scroll right for the entire link:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeoPortal/KGSPortalLink.asp?startLeft=-85.658333&startBottom=36.948913&startRight=-85.589404&startTop=36.990278&imsDatum=0&imsProj=5&imsUnits=0

Where:

startLeft = minX

startBottom = minY

startRight = maxX

startTop = maxY

imsDatum: nad83=0, nad27=1

imsProj: kysinglezone=0, kynorth=1, kysouth=2, utm16=3, utm17=4, Geographic=5

imsUnits: dd=0, usft=1, meters=2, intlft=3, miles=4, km=5

If you are using the popular ArcIMS HTML viewer, you can use the following Javascript (or a form of it) to create this link (this script gets the bounding coords from the HTML viewer) -
this script is for a site that is in KY Single Zone (assign this as a javascript to a link or the KYMAPS image on your ArcIMS site):

So, if your site is in any of the coordinate systems listed above, and is in Kentucky, feel free to link to this "Mini-Portal".

Tool #2: "Zoom To A Location Tool" (or KGS Stand-Alone Tool). This tool gives the user a number of different location types to select or enter
(counties, quadrangles, parks, streams, roads, coordinates, etc...), which will generate a link which will zoom in on that point or area of interest on the hosting ArcIMS site. It is a very simple to implement as it only requires a link from the host ArcIMS site.

You can see how this tool works by going here.

Click the "zoom to a location" link and icon on the bottom part of the page, then select or enter the information for a location of interest.
Click the "zoom to a selected area" button, and the map will zoom to the extent of the location selected. As with all these tools all the work,
which is mostly a database query, is done on the KGS server and no files are required to be uploaded to the host ArcIMS site.

In order to implement this, all you need to do is have the following URL open from your ArcIMS site - be sure to scroll right for the entire link:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/kgsgeoportal/portalsolotool.asp?url=kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeology/viewer.asp&imsDatum=0&imsProj=5&imsUnits=0

Where:

url: the url of the opening site (the present ArcIMS site that the link is placed on)

imsDatum: nad83=0, nad27=1

imsProj: kysinglezone=0, kynorth=1, kysouth=2, utm16=3, utm17=4, Geographic=5

imsUnits: dd=0, usft=1, meters=2, intlft=3, miles=4, km=5

If you don't enter the imsDatum, imsProj, and imsUnits variables, the tool will assume KY Single Zone.

Tool #3: "Coordinate Identification Tool". This tool is a little more difficult to implement than the previous tools, but is one which retrieves the coordinates for a selected point on your ArcIMS site. The coordinates for a selected point are displayed in 14 different projections and/or datums - and will also return the county and quadrangle of the point.

You can try it out here.

Click on the "point locator" tool on the left-hand tool bar (bottom right tool - arrow-to-point icon), and then click anywhere on your map. On this site, this tool plots a little yellow "x" on the map, and this tool can't make your site do that - you'll have to put the code that yourself (if you need help with this, feel free to contact doug curl (doug(at)uky.edu).

In order to implement this you will need to make a link to the tool that looks something like this (this is for a single zone site) - be sure to scroll right for the entire link:

http://kgsmap.uky.edu/website/KGSGeoPortal/identify.asp?EastX=4980333.540698203&NorthY=3800212.13056375&datum=0&proj=0&units=1&mode=idcoords

Where:

EastX=the X map coordinate (not the image coordinate

NorthY=the Y map coordinate (not the image coordinate)

imsDatum: nad83=0, nad27=1

imsProj: kysinglezone=0, kynorth=1, kysouth=2, utm16=3, utm17=4, Geographic=5

imsUnits: dd=0, usft=1, meters=2, intlft=3, miles=4, km=5

Again, similar to the other tool, you can send info in any datum, proj, and units that are within Kentucky. You must, must, must send the "&mode=idcoords" part of the URL - or else you'll get an error on the identification page.

Here's a suggested Javascript for the HTML viewer (attach this to a tool icon in your toolbar):

I suggest putting this script in the aimsUserBuffer.js file, and the x,y variables are the map coordinates for the selected points - so you'll need to investigate further to get this info (I suggest looking at the buffer tool as a guide!). I'm not too familiar with the HTML viewer - so excuse my incompleteness here.

Feel free to use these tools in any way that you can with your ArcIMS site. If you have any questions about how to implement these, or suggestions on improvements, or if you experience issues, please notify doug curl, doug(at)uky.edu, at the Kentucky Geological Survey.

Welcome and about this blog

2007-01-19T17:21:00.000-05:00

The purpose of this weblog ("blog") is to inform Kentucky Geological Survey website users about updates to the section of the KGS website that is devoted to serving our internet maps, publication information, and tabular databases (oil and gas wells, water wells, coal information, etc...). You may view the weblog in 3 different ways:

1) view as a webpage at http://kgsweb.blogspot.com

2) view as entries on the Maps, Publications, and Databases website: http://kgsweb.uky.edu/main.asp

3) subscribe to the RSS feed for this weblog at http://kgsweb.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Check this blog for site updates, information on how to use the site, and for any messages about site maintenance and downtime. Postings will be informal, and comments are encouraged.