About Estuary Data Mapper (EDM)
The Estuary Data Mapper (EDM) is a free, interactive graphical application under development by the US EPA that allows scientific researchers to quickly and easily:
- View and select estuary-scale geographical regions of interest - i.e., pan and zoom a map of the US coastal states displaying watersheds, streams and estuaries, land coverage, satellite images, etc. The Gallery page showcases many of EDM's visual highlights.
- Retrieve and view specified water-quality data, gauge measurements of tides and freshwater discharges, gridded modeled nitrogen deposition, land use, topography/bathymetry, satellite data, etc., subsetted by date-time and lat-long rectangle. (Data streamed via web servers at EPA, NOAA, USGS, USFWS, etc. Examples of water-quality data points include dissolved oxygen, turbidity and chlorophyll.)
The list of available maps and data is shown in the EDM GUI. (Grayed-out buttons indicate a not-yet-implemented feature.) - Save the data in the following formats for further analysis and import into the EPA estuarine data model, ArcGIS or open source GIS, GoogleEarth, etc.:
- PNG images,
- MPG movies,
- KML files,
- ESRI shapefiles, and
- ESRI ACII grids.