Theresa Valentine US Forest Service Corvallis Forest Science Lab Visualizing Long Term Data: Developing Time Series Animations Using ArcGIS 9.2 Theresa Valentine US Forest Service Corvallis Forest Science Lab

Overview Why Time? Preparing your data Primer on Animations Graphing Working with Spatial Data Making a Video Demo Resources/Help

Time Historical Data Projections out to the future Fire History Road building history Harvest history Projections out to the future Looking for trends/interactions Precipitation/harvest/road building/slide locations Able to look at many factors with time as the constant

Preparing your Data What data can be animated In Arcmap, ArcScene, or ArcGlobe Feature class layers Raster catalog layers NetCDF layers (feature, raster, or table) In ArcMap, you can also animate tables, feature class layers, and netCDF layers in a graph 2 ways to animate: attribute values change over time or shapes of features change over time

Time Field Formats Need to be able to identify a start field or start and end fields Date, string, integer, and double String: YYYYMMDD YYY/MM/DD YYYY-MM-DD YYYYMMDDhhmmss YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss Integer and double field YYYYMMDD YYYYMMDDhhmmss hh (00-23) See help for formatting a date string using the field calculator

Working with Tables One to one or many to one table relationships Attributes stored in another table Table must be joined to feature class layer or to the base table One to one: Use the Add Join Tool in the toolbox One to Many: use Make Query Table Tool Note that the tables to be joined must be within the same geodatabase! Creating indexes will increase performance. May need to reformat the table. The Transpose Time Fields Tool can be run to reformat the fields

Reformatting Time in Your Data Shape State_name Y1980 Y1990 Y2000 Polygon Oregon 106 22 1000 Wash 202 2234 Idaho 222 1232 Transpose Time Tool Shape State_name Time Value Polygon Oregon 1980 106 Wash 202 Idaho 222

Graphing Creating a Graph in ArcMap Start the graph wizard (tools, graphs) Right click properties and advanced properties after you create the base graph Look at the help for more information (creating a graph)

Working with Spatial Data Attribute values change (populations of counties over time) Shape of each feature changes over time (wildfire progression, road network increasing over time) Each change is represented as a separate feature and each feature has a different date. You can choose to show the active features for a time period or show all features from the beginning of the animation to the current time period (progression of fire).

Spatial Data Feature Class Layers Raster Catalog Layers NetCDF layers Coverages, shape files, regions, feature classes Raster Catalog Layers Need a time field in the raster catalog attribute table NetCDF layers You choose a dimension to animate through.

Primer on Animations Bring up the Animation toolbar in ArcMap, ArcScene, or ArcGlobe (view> toolbars>animation) You need to clear your animations to start or the last one you used will still be there (you can save and reload animations). Read up on the help. It’s pretty good, but it’s easy to get lost. Things don’t always work as they should. Sometimes it’s good to save, exit, and reload. When doing graphs, turn off all the layers in your arcmap session as it’ll try to automate that instead of your graph.

Primer on Animations Step 1: Create the time layer track click on animation on the animation toolbar and click Create Keyframe Click the Type drop-down arrow and choose Time Layer Click the source object drop-down arrow and click the layer or table you want to animate The track can be bound later to multiple layers or tables to animate more than one layer or table at the same time Click new to create a new track (use default name) or type in a new name and click new. Keyframe name input box, alter the default name for the first keyframe (start time) Click create to create a new keyframe for the track Keyframe name input box, alter the default name for the second keyframe (end time) Click create to create another keyframe for the track Only two keyframes are required, but you can have more if you want different time intervals (see notes in help)

Primer on Animations Step 2: Manage track and keyframe properties Click on Animation and click Animation Manager Click the Tracks tab, click the track you created, and click Properties Click the Time Track Properties tab Specify the start time field (and the end if necessary) Click the Format drop-down arrow (for date-formatted fields you don’t have to set the format. Use the blank if non of them fit) Check Animate fields cumulatively if desired Click Calculate Times Check Show time in display if you want time displayed (very useful) Check Show track name in the display if you want to see the name of the track in the animation Click OK Click the Keyframe tab Click in the Time column to alter the time values Click in the interval column to alter the interval Click in the units column to set the units to use Click close on the Animation Manger (you might want to save this so you can reload it later, especially if the computer bombs out on you) There is also no ‘undo’ in the animation manager

Primer on Animations Tips: Step 3: Play the Animation Two ways to do it: Play the animation automatically using the Animation Controls dialog box Play the animation manually using the Time View Slider Tips: You can remove the time text from your arcmap display with the select elements tool from the tools toolbar and delete. Look at the options under the Animation Controls. restore state after playing You might want to check this off Change your play options and recalculate

Making a Video You can export your animation to a video (from the animation toolbar). This can take a lot longer than you think. If you don’t use the option to enable off screen recording, you could run into problems with the FS 15 minute screen time-out) Be sure to click on the options tab before starting the recording process.

Demo Videos and ArcMap Data from HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Cooperative program with Willamette National Forest, PNW Research Station (Corvallis Lab) and Oregon State University Long Term Ecological Research Site (National Science Foundation) www.fsl.orst.edu/lter for more information

Resources/Help ArcGIS Help: Mapping and Visualization Animating data through time Contact Theresa Valentine tvalentine@fs.fed.us