Ohio Mussel Atlas

Ohio Freshwater Mussel Atlas

Click here for information on data access, policies, and terms and conditions

Go To Atlas

Data sources: Collection records from OSU Division of Molluscs. Map overlays from the
Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Funding: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife.

Important: When making inquiries fields are limited to a length of 12 characters. Typing 13 will not give any results! For instance, searching for "ferussacianus" will return no matches whereas "ferussacianu" will work. Please keep this in mind.

We suggest you read the following primer and try it out to get a feel for how the maps work.

Welcome to the Ohio Mussel Atlas! This primer should help you become familiar with how to use the Atlas.
One thing to be aware of is that once you are on the Ohio Mussel Atlas page, you can’t just click the back
button and end up where you were before. If you keep clicking it, you’ll get there eventually, or you can use
the dropdown arrow (next to the back button, depending on which browser you are using) to get back. Of course,
we at The Ohio State University Museum of Biological Diversity Division of Molluscs are confident that you’ll want
to add this page to your bookmarked list of favorites anyway, and once you’re here, you’ll probably never want to go back.

There are a couple of things to notice on the main page of the atlas. There is an over view map in the upper
left corner that will show where in the state of Ohio you are when you have ‘zoomed in’. The keys/buttons/icons
you will be using to navigate the map are in this region as well. The right hand side of the page is a list of "Layers".
These are the map features that you can view, manipulate, and query from the site. Checking the "Visible" box for
a layer will allow it to appear after refreshing the map. Selecting "Active" for a layer will make that the layer from which
you can query or identify features. Queries will be built, and tabular data displayed, in the box on the bottom of
the screen (it just appears white in the screen shot below).

On the actual map you can hold the cursor over each button to see what it does, or refer to the table below.

Toggle between legend and layer list	Toggle overview map
Zoom in	Zoom out
Zoom to full extent	Zoom to active layer
Back to last extent	Pan
Identify	Query
Clear selection	Print *** to use this print key, you must “allow popups” on the page

Try the following activities:

I. Zooming and selecting layers

        a. Select the zoom in tool and drag and draw a box to zoom in to the northwest corner of the state. Notice that as you
            continue to zoom in, the following layer options appear in the layer list on the right hand side of the screen:  Land Use,
            Water Hi-Res, Roads.

In the layer list, click to check the "visible" box next to the following layers: Collection sites, Water bodies, Water Hi-res,
Incorporations.

Click the "refresh map" button.

Your map should look similar to the one here:

Experiment with making different layers visible at different magnifications and locations in the state. Remember to click

after each change.

II. Building a query – before starting this exercise, go back to the original map. You can do this by either returning to the first page of the site, or selecting
the "zoom to full extent" button, then click the boxes to remove all checks from the layer list except "Lakes," "Water bodies,"
and "Background", and finally click to clear the other layers.

a. Make the layer "Collection Sites" visible and active and refresh map.

b. Click the query builder tool from the options in the upper left. The query builder options will appear at the bottom of the screen.

c. Now you will build a query to identify collection sites from which Villosa fabalis were collected after 1965. From the dropdown list
under "Field", select Species, and type fabalis in the Value box.

Click Add to Query String, and you will see text appear in the box next to this button. Because you are building a complex query,
you will need to click the And button before moving to the next step.

        d. Now that you have selected Villosa fabalis, you still need to specify that you only want to see sites from which it was found
        after 1965. To do this, go back to the "Field" list, and select YEAR. This time we need to change the operator as well,
        to be ">" greater than, and enter 1965 in the "Value" box. Remember to click Add to Query String when you are finished.
        Your final Query should read

SPECIES = "fabalis" AND YEAR > 1965

Now click execute, and the following map should appear.

Notice that the collection sites are highlighted in red, and that a table of information about your query appears in the
Query box at the bottom of the screen.

        Try this one. Zoom back to maximum extent. Make a new query: Species = clava AND Year >1990 AND
        Live_fresh = X. These are collections made after 1990 of clava that were either alive or fresh dead. Obviously this kind
        of query may be quite useful.

III. Identifying specific sites

a. Click the eraser to clear your queried data selection. Then click the identify tool. Let’s zoom in to the
northwest corner of the state again. Zoom in far enough that the Water Hi-Res layer appears.

        b. With the "Collection Sites" layer visible and active, line up the cross over a black data point, and click the data point.
        You will see tabular data appear in the query box at the bottom of the screen with information about that collection site.
        You will get a list of all species for that site, what condition the specimens were in, and year collected. Try a few data
        points before moving on.

        c. Now you can experiment with identifying data from different layers. To do this, try making each layer in the layer list
        active one at a time, and clicking on an item from that layer with the identify cross (in other words, click on a body of water
        with "Water Hi-Res" as the active layer, a town with "Incorporation" active, etc.)

Notes

The land use layer cannot be queried with the identify tool. Toggle the Legend with land use active to see land use explanation.

We are aware of a few "bogus" points and will be removing them soon. Strange range extensions, etc. Please inform us of any mistakes.

AOL users: some features may not work correctly with AOL’s browser.

Remember to enable popups if you wish to print a map.

If you do not see the "Home" button below, enable Active-X for this site.

Counter courtesy of WebCounter. Visit them.