United States Office of Water EPA-823-F-98-010

Environmental Protection 4305 April 1998Agency

Help Card

The 1997 Listing of Fish and Wildlife Advisories (LFWA) includes advisories issued in thestates and in the Canadian provinces. The extensive reporting and mapping capabilitiesof the listing include:

• Flexible searches and queries. You can select advisories by any combination

of State or Province, EPA Region (or Canada), Advisory Type, Pollutant,Species, Affected Population, Status (active or rescinded), and Issuer. Anexample would be “all PCB advisories in EPA Region 5 issued by the FederalGovernment.” By default, all active advisories are selected unless otherwisespecified. You can also view fish tissue data by checking the appropriate box,Show Fish Tissue Data.

• A variety of reports, listing all advisories or just the advisories that meet your

search criteria. These reports include a summary report, reports of thepercentage of the size of each state’s lakes and rivers under advisory andassessed for advisory, and the relative increase or decrease from the previousyear in the numbers and sizes of advisories by state. A report listing themethod used to establish an advisory, the advisory contact, and phonenumber by state is also included.

• On-screen maps showing the traces or counts of all advisories or only your

selected advisories. These maps can be produced on an international, national,EPA Regional, or state or province-wide basis. You can zoom down toparticular areas, click on individual advisories to get detailed information, andeven overlay different searches in color. The maps can be printed to a file or toyour printer with your own titles. Note that about 9% of active advisories inNorth America have not been georeferenced due to lack of locationalinformation. No locational data are available for advisories in British Columbia,Alberta, or the Yukon Territory.

InstallationThe LFWA requires a PC running Microsoft Windows 3.1 or later, a minimum of 16 MBof RAM, and approximately 30 MB of disk space.To Install the Program under Windows 3.1 (from floppy diskettes):

1. Place the diskette labeled Disk1-Setup in drive A: (or B:).2. Start Microsoft Windows 3.1.3. In the Program Manager, click on File, and then Run.4. Type A:setup97 (or B:setup97) in the command box.5. Click the OK button and follow the instructions on the screen.

Listing of Fish and Wildlife Consumption Advisories

es tabular access to your data, based on your selected

ct a report, it will be displayed on screen to view. You

 printer icon. By Advisory, the other Search menu

etical, incrementally searchable list of all advisories.

s list by typing the first few characters of the advisory

ories, you can view the data or map them.

ncluding the Map Type to display (advisory traces or

 Draw all or just the selected advisories, show or

ta when an advisory is selected or a query is done,

atitude/longitude), overlay Geographic Layers such

nd select what Colors to use on the maps and

e status bar at the bottom of the screen. Simply point

hoices.

he screen. You can select the entire U.S., an EPA

province map. These maps will include all of the

geographic unit. Search can then be used to overlay

e maps if you desire. The Options settings control

e map. The map window consists of a viewing area

ap area, the left mouse button can be used to select

may have to try a couple of times to highlight the

ler traces. When you have successfully clicked the

advisory will appear. For Canadian advisories, you will

w icons on the speedbar to highlight the advisories

ecause these advisories are point, rather than trace,

se button places a “zoom” box on the screen,

rsor. The speedbar buttons can be used to Zoom in,

aller, Zoom box larger, select Next or Previous

riteria, Draw the overlay map, Draw the Canadian

, Print the visible map, and Close the map window.

ures will not work if there is more than one map

g session.

ore than one map open in a session. You can select

more than one map has been created by selecting its

n menu.

and is also context-sensitive. This means that you can

u are in the program by pressing F1, and the help will

activity. The Help menu is divided into Contents;

h displays an incrementally searchable list of keywords;

des help for whatever Windows version is installed on

the Listing, which provides brief information on the

 contact, available system resources remaining, the

the version number of the program.

more information, contact:

Jeffrey Bigler (202)-260-1305

(FAX 202-260-9830)

il: Bigler.Jeff@epamail.epa.gov
r Windows NT 4.0 or later:

n Run.

en edit box, and then click OK.

the screen.

plete, you are ready to run the program:

3.1 or later (not necessary in Windows 95).

97 icon (select from Start/Programs in Windows 95).

he LFWA.

r drivers for printing maps and reports. The maps can be

rinter set up in your Windows Print Manager. You may

e Print Manager.

ollowing sequence. We will examine active (as of Decem

U.S. The results of this quick tutorial will be maps showing

nd counts of mercury advisories by state and a full report

rch and then By Parameter. This brings up all of the

r Select Pollutant, use the scroll bars to locate

he left mouse button. Mercury should now be

active mercury advisories will be selected. Click

to select rescinded advisories.) At the bottom of the

button. The first 250 records for all active mercury

ar in spreadsheet format. Scroll through the list, both

to see the available information. Then click More to see

ndow to return to the Search window.

n click Search/By Parameter. Check the box

ata instead of Advisory Data. The tissue data list

a state and press View Data.

 the Select Pollutant box. Now Click the Reports

ge to show all of the types of available reports. Click

 report for mercury advisories will now be on the

ns let you move back and forth through the report,

 the “magnifying glass” icon), and send the report to

window. You may want to limit records to a particular

click on a state of interest and then the Reports and

ose the report window.

pen, make sure that mercury is still highlighted. Now

button. This action will close the Select window and

prepare the system for mapping the selected mercury advisories. Since mercuryadvisories span both the U.S. and Canada, the combined map will appear with theselected advisories in red (by default). At this point, you may choose to displayinformation about each advisory, one at a time, by clicking on the trace of yourchoice. You may also scroll through the advisories using the arrow icons on thespeedbar.

Step 4: Map Overlays

You may wish to add, for example, PCB advisories to your map of mercury advisories. You can do this by selecting the Search/By Parameter option from the mainmenu again and highlighting PCBs from the pollutant list. Now click the MapOverlay button. Then select Options/Colors/Selected Advisories from the menu

and change the color from red to green (or any available color other than red).Then, click the Pencil icon on the speedbar. This will map the nationwide PCB

advisories, in green, on top of your mercury advisories. Note that any mercury andPCB advisories that overlap will be green.

Step 5: Map of Advisory Counts

To make a map showing counts of active mercury advisories by state, select Search/By Parameter from the main menu. Highlight mercury from the pollutant list asbefore. Click on the Map Counts button, and a new map showing counts by state

will be drawn. You can move back and forth between your maps by selectingWindow, then the name of the window to view, or by just clicking on the window.

This completes our brief tutorial. To exit the Listing, select File/Exit or double click the “slash”

in the upper left corner of the window button (the Listing icon in the upper left corner or theX icon in the upper right corner in Windows 95).

Main MenuThe Listing follows standard Windows protocols for user interfaces. The entire system is runusing mouse “point and click” options.File has one option, Exit. Exit will immediately end your Listing session.Search opens the mapping and reporting capabilities of the Listing. There are two options:

search By Parameter or By Advisory Name. For example, if you want to examinemercury advisories for Minnesota, select Search/By Parameter. When the Search

window appears, go down the list and select MN. Then click on mercury from thepollutant list. Your selection is highlighted on the screen. To deselect something, justclick on it again. You can click on more than one item in a list. For instance you maywant to group the pollutants DDD, DDE, and DDT in one query; simply click on allthree pollutants. If you do not click anything, all advisories will be selected. You mayalso select parameters in any combination from the other lists. Click on View Datato display all advisories meeting your criteria. Map Advisories prepares a map of

selected advisories in red by default. Map Counts will show the number of advisories meeting the criteria by state and province. Graph Counts is used to graph

trends over time; it should be used with the 1993 through 1997 version only. MapOverlay is useful when you want to show the results of more than one query on amap, such as mercury and PCB advisories nationwide.