&EPA Help Card
United States Office of Water EPA-823-B-96-005
Environmental Protection 4305 June 1996
Agency
National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Consumption
Advisories
The National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Consumption Advisories (NLFWCA) is
distributed as a Microsoft Windows® program that includes a wide range of
reporting and mapping capabilities. Some of these capabilities include:
A flexible search and query system. You can select advisories by any
combination of State, EPA Region, Pollutant, Species, Population Affected,
and Status (active or rescinded). An example would be "all active mercury
advisories in the U.S.".
A wide range of reports, listing all advisories or just the advisories that
meet your search criteria. These reports include a summary report and
reports of the percentage of each State's waterbodies affected by fish
consumption advisories and the relative increase or decrease in numbers
and the size of advisories by State. A report listing the general method,
contact, and phone number by State is also included.
On-screen maps showing the traces or counts of all advisories or your
selected advisories. These maps can be produced on a National, EPA
Regional, or State-wide basis. You can "zoom" down to particular areas,
"click" on individual advisories to get detailed information, and even
overlay different searches in color. The maps can be printed, with your
own titles. You can set up several maps, and then move back and forth
between them in one session.
Installation
The NLFWCA requires a PC running Microsoft Windows 3.0 or later, a minimum
of 4 MB of RAM, and approximately 25 MB of disk space.
To Install the Program under Windows 3.0, 3.1, or NT
(from floppy diskettes):
1. Place the diskette labeled Disk! -Setup in drive A: (or B:).
2. Start Microsoft Windows.
3. In the Program Manager, click on file, and then Run.
4. Type "A:setup" (or "B:setup") without the quotes, in the command box.
5. Click the OK button.
6. Follow the instructions on the screen.
To install under Windows 95:
1. Click the Start button, then Run.
2. Type a:setup in the Open edit box, and then click OK.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen.
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Once the installation process is complete, you are ready to run the program:
1. Start Microsoft Windows 3.11 or earlier (not necessary in Windows 95).
2. Double click on the NLFWCA icon (select from Start/Programs in Windows 95).
3. That's it! You are now in the NLFWCA.
Uninstalling the 1994 NLFWCA
The 1994 NLFWCA can be uninstalled if you no longer wish to use it. If you
have installed it in the directory \FAMAP, issue the commands cd\, and then
DELTREEXFAMAP, from the DOS prompt.
Printer Hints
The NLFWCA uses the Windows printer drivers for printing maps and reports. The maps
can be printed in color if you have a color printer set up in your Windows Print Manager.
You may also select map orientation using the Print Manager.
Quick Tutorial
To get a feel for the NLFWCA, try the following sequence. We will examine active (as of
December, 1995) Mercury advisories in the U.S. The results of this quick tutorial will be
maps showing the location of Mercury advisories and counts of Mercury advisories by
State, and a full report of the associated data.
Step 1: Querying
On the main menu, click Search, and then by Parameter. This brings up all of
the search criteria available. Under Select Pollutant, use the scroll bars to locate
"Mercury". Click Mercury with the left mouse button. Mercury should now be
highlighted. (By default, only active Mercury advisories will be selected. Click
Rescinded in the Status box to override.) At the bottom of the window, click
the View Data button. The first 250 records for all active mercury advisories in
the U.S will appear in spreadsheet format. Scroll through the list, both up and
down and sideways to see the available information. Then click More to see
additional data. Close this window to return to the Search window.
Step 2: Reporting
Leave Mercury highlighted in the Select Pollutant box. Now Click the Reports
button. The buttons will change to show all of the types of available reports.
Click the Full Advisory Report button; the full report for Mercury advisories will
now be on the screen. The directional buttons let you move back and forth
through the report, view the full page (by clicking the "Magnifying glass" icon),
and send the report to the printer. Close the report window. You may want to
limit records to a particular state. In the Search window, click on a state of
interest and then the Reports and Full buttons to view. Close the report
window.
Step 3: Map of Advisories
With the Select window still open, make sure that Mercury is still highlighted.
Now, click on the Map Advisories button. This action will close the Select
window, and prepare the system for mapping the selected Mercury advisories.
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Since Mercury advisories span the entire U.S., the U.S. map will appear with the
selected advisories, in red (by default). At this point, you may choose to display
information about each advisory, one at a time, by clicking on the trace of your
choice. You may also scroll through the advisories in alphabetical order using
the arrow icons on the speedbar.
Step 4: Map Overlays
At this point, you may wish to add, say, PCB advisories to your map of Mercury
advisories. You can do this by selecting Search/by Parameter option from the
main menu again, and highlighting PCBs from the Pollutant list. Now click the
Map Overlay 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). Finally, 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 and PCB advisories that overlap will be green.
Step 5: Map of Advisory Counts
Now we will 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 as before. Click on the Map Counts button, and a new map
showing counts by State will now be drawn. You can move back and forth
between your maps by selecting Window, then the name of the window to
view.
This completes our brief tutorial. To exit the NLFWCA, select File/Exit, or double click
the "slash" in the upper left corner of the window button (the NLFWCA icon in the
upper left corner or the X icon in the upper right corner in Windows 95).
Main Menu
The NLFWCA follows standard Windows protocols for user interfaces. The entire system
is run using mouse "point and click" options.
File has one option, Exit. Exit will immediately end your NLFWCA session.
Search opens the mapping and reporting capabilities of the NLFWCA. There are
two options: Search by Parameter and by Advisory Name. For example,
if you want to examine Mercury advisories nationwide, select Search/by
Advisory. When the Search window appears, go down the Pollutant list
and Click on "Mercury". Your selection is highlighted on the screen. To
deselect something, just click on it again. You can click on more than one
item in a list. For instance you may want to group the pollutants "ODD",
"DDE", and "DDT" in one query; simply click on all three pollutants. If you
do not click anything, the query will return all advisories. You may also
select parameters in any combination from the other lists. Click on view
Data to 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. Overlay Map
is useful when you want to show the results of more than one query on a
map, such as Mercury and PCB advisories nationwide.
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The Reports button provides tabular access to your data, based on
your selected parameters. When you select a report, it will be displayed
on screen to view. You can print it by selecting the printer icon. By
Advisory, the other Search menu option, displays an alphabetical,
incrementally searchable list of all advisories. You can search through
this list by typing the first few characters of ihe advisory name. After
selecting advisories, you can view the data or map them.
Options controls the map display, including the type of map to display
(advisory traces or counts). You can choose to Draw All or just the
Selected advisories, display latitude/longitude coordinates, Overlay
Cities on the map, what Colors to use on the maps, and whether
or not to display the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Simply
point and click on your desired choices.
Maps generates color maps on the screen. You can select the entire U.S., an
EPA Region, or a specific State map. These maps will include all cr the-
advisories for the selected geographical unit. Search can then be used
to overlay selected advisories on these maps if you desire. The Options
settings control what initially displays on the map. The map window
consists of a viewing area and a speedbar. On the map area, the left
mouse button can be used to select an individual advisory; you may
have to try a couple of times to get the mouse right on the advisory,
especially for smaller traces. When you have successfully clicked the
advisory, the data for that advisory will appear. The right mouse button
places a "/oom" box on the screen, centered on the mouse cursor.
There is a set of speedbar buttons at the bottom of the map. These
buttons can be used to Zoom in, Zoom out, Zoom out to top level,
Zoom box smaller, Zoom box larger, Next, Previous advisor)', Note
selection criteria, Print the map, Draw advisories, and Close the mao
window. Note that the "zoom" features will not work if there is more
than one map window in your K'LFWCA session.
Window is used when you have more than one map open in a session. You can
select which map to view when more than one map has been created
by selecting its name from the drop down menu. You can a'so choose
to Tite, Cascade, or Arrange Icons for your maps.
Help is available from the menu, and is also context-sensitive. This means
that you can get help from wherever you are in the proqram by
pressing F1, and the help will be related to your current activity! Thf
Help menu is divided into Contents, Search for Help On, whit h
displays an incrementally searchable list of keywords, Help on Help,
which provides help for whatever Windows version is installed on vour
machine, and About the NLFWCA, which provides brief information
on the system, including points of contact, available system resources
remaining, the EXF file creation date, and the version number of the
program.
For additional information, contact:
U.S. EPA, Office of Water
Jeff Bigler (202)-260-1 305
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