Crash Course on Basic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by conservationph

The Crash Course on Basic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was made possible by the support of the American People though the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This document was produced by the Center for Conservation Innovations PH Inc (CCIPH) and its consortium partners under the USAID INSPIRE (Investing in Sustainability Partnerships for Inclusive Growth and Regenerative Programs) Project with Contract No. 720492-21-CA-00004, and CCIPH Grant No. INSPIRE-SA-2021-10-001 through its prime agency, Gerry Roxas Foundation. The contents of this Crash Course Guide are the sole responsibility of CCIPH and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID of the United States government.

AUTHORS

Regina Aedrianne Felismino-Inovejas, Czeskian Realo, Naomi Portia Chavez, Kristine Joy Andaya, and Oliver Coroza

Design: Pauline Abello & Roy Oliver Corvera, CCIPH

Layout: Pauline Abello, CCIPH

About INSPIRE Project

The Investing in Sustainability and Partnerships for Inclusive Growth and Regenerative Ecosystems or INSPIRE is a five-year grant facility of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), implemented by the Gerry Roxas Foundation INSPIRE aims to advance natural resource resilience and security through the increased participation and engagement of civil society organizations (CSOs), local communities including indigenous peoples, academe, and media

INSPIRE has awarded 35 grants (including two disability-inclusive climate action grants and seven conservation emergency grants) amounting to US$11.6 million (PhP608.9 million) to implement biodiversity conservation, wildlife protection, natural resource management, and local climate actions in the Philippines Additionally, grantees were also instrumental in safeguarding critically endangered species, such as the Philippine Eagle, the Walden's Hornbill, Philippine Freshwater Crocodile, and the Isabela Oriole, among others The grantees continue to work with 26 indigenous peoples tribes in the conservation and preservation of biodiversity-rich forestland in the country.

The following are priority projects of the USAID-INSPIRE project:

(1) Development and Behavioral Change communication - Enable CSOs and local communities to demand effective management and conservation of the environment by inspiring public conversations on and collective action for natural resource security and governance; (2) Capacity Development - Enhance the capacities of CSOs and community partners to act as catalyst for natural resource management and climate action at the local level; (3) Private Sector Engagement - harness the resources and expertise of private companies and businesses to support natural resource security and governance; and (4) Conservation-based Enterprise - provide benefit streams to communities, reduce pressures on natural resources, and generate knowledge of and accord proper value to natural resources

About CCIPH

The Center for Conservation Innovation PH Inc is a biodiversity conservation nongovernment organization (NGO) that aims to promote innovations and development of new biodiversity conservation approaches and regenerative livelihoods by developing partnerships and building capacities for science-based, nature-inspired, and socially appropriate conservation strategies.

In 2019, CCIPH was commissioned by the DENR - Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) to analyze changes in forest cover within 30 protected areas, and mapping of forest formations in two pilot protected area sites. This provides understanding that deforestation rates within protected areas are lower than the average rates outside the protection areas (buffer zones) This attests to the management effectiveness to adequately protect forests within protected areas.

Fast forward, CCIPH with USAID’s SIBOL (Sustainable Interventions for Biodiversity, Oceans and Landscapes) project mapped coastal and marine ecosystems of Masinloc and Oyon Bay Protected Landscape and Seascape and that of Siargao Island Protected Landscape and Seascape This gives marine protected areas a clear vision on how to manage seascapes and provides spatial information to establish conservation zones. Pivoting to disaster response and management, CCIPH developed a Green Assessment Framework which heavily involves mapping of severely damaged areas, and develop a restoration planning program with the technical working groups of LGU Puerto Princesa City (Puerto Princesa Subterranean River Natural Park and Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat), LGU Roxas, and LGU San Vicente The framework is now being adopted by the DENR Climate Change Service, and is currently being taught with technical trainings to capacitate DENR Regional Offices. This brings forward the mapping capacities on how to immediately analyze and develop mitigating strategies to reverse the impacts of changes in the landscape

Objectives

To provide the participants a quick rundown of the geographic information systems technology with hands-on exercises to familiarize with the data formats and types; and

To gain the skills of using open-source software QGIS and Google Earth Pro in processing GIS data layers using either vector and raster data formats, data capture through digitizing, executing vector- or rasterbased analysis and generating map layouts for spatial data; and

To enable the participants gain the necessary skills in locating their project areas, building boundaries of these areas and visualizing them on a map

Outline

Concept on Geographic Information System

Introduction to Geographic Information System

Introduction to Quantum GIS

Introduction to Google Earth Pro (as support to QGIS)

Concepts of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Geographic Information System

Reference: GIS (Geographic Information System) | National Geographic Society

Let’s start with some questions...

What is the best representation of Earth?

What comes into your mind when I mentioned GIS?

What does GIS do?

Do we need GIS?

Maps

There are many different formulas of flattening the earth, each designed to cause less distortion in specific places. But the most used version of map that represents the earth in 2D is this map shown above. To come up with this map, we uses map projections.

Maps Projections

Image source: map-projections net

Map projections is a process of transforming a spherical object into a 2-dimensional flat surface.

Reference: NASA

Maps

Reference: NASA

This projection is the most used projection today because this is used by most of the web mapping systems such as Google maps, Bing Earth and other base map that you see on the web

But as you can observe, Mercator Projection shows the correct shape of the landmass but distorts its size The projection shrinks the countries that are closer to the equator and makes those near the poles look larger

Let’s try to see and compare the correct size of countries on a map through this website

It was inspired by German graphic designer Kai Krause's image of the ‘True Size of Africa’, (this can be seen in global-air.com)

As you can see on this map, Africa is bigger than most of Europe, the United States, China, Japan and India combined

Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS)

CRS is used to specify the location of an object on the surface of the earth through the use of coordinates

They can be classified into two:

Geographic Coordinate Reference Systems use degrees of latitude and longitude as coordinates to refer to position

Projected Coordinate Reference Systems use linear units (e.g. meters, feet, kilometers) of eastings and northings as coordinates

Reference: https://www esri com/enus/what-is-gis

Reference: https://spatialreference org/

Geographic Coordinate Reference System

Projected Coordinate Reference System

There are two data types involved in GIS: Spatial data and Non – Spatial data

Spatial data can be divided to three types of objects: Point, Line & Polygon 1 Non-spatial data is usually stored in an attribute table 2

Spatial Data

Non - Spatial Data

Reference: GIS DATA TYPES (uwc ac za)

Geographic features which do not have length or width and always represented by a point For example, location of a mall within a city

Geographic features which have adequate length but no width For example, river networks within a watershed

Attribute Table

Geographic features which are large enough and have closed boundary For example, provincial boundaries in a Region Information

Polygon

Geographic Information System

A computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface.

Reference: https://www esri com/en-us/what-is-gis

Four main functions of a GIS: GIS has a data management component for storing Geographic locations; 1. GIS visualizes geographic data typically using Maps; 2. GIS software can analyze spatial relationships and patterns using geoprocessing; 3 GIS can either create new data or edit existing data 4.

Data Management

Reference: GIS Data - The Beginner's Guide to GIS | Mango (mangomap com)

Data Management - Vector Data

Reference: https://bnhr xyz/

Data Management - Vector Data Shapefile

NAME

FUNCTION

SHP contains geometry of a feature.

DBF contains the attribute data

PRJ contains information about the “projection” and “coordinate system”

SHX allows GIS systems to find features within the SHP file more quickly

Reference: GIS Data - The Beginner's Guide to GIS | Mango (mangomap com)

Data Management - Raster Data

Raster

A raster is a cell-based or pixel-based representation of real-world objects composed of rows and columns of cells or pixels where each cell or pixel represents a geographical area The value of the cell represents the value of an attribute in the said geographic area.

Data Management - Other Data Formats

NAME

CSV - Comma Separated Value File

FUNCTION

It’s literally a text file where columns are separated by commas and rows are separated by line breaks

File GeoDatabase collection of files in a folder on disk that can store, query, and manage both spatial and nonspatial data

Tab File

This format is very similar to the Shapefile and is the default format

KML the default file format of Google Earth.

GeoJSON

GeoTIFF

It’s primarily used by software developers due to the ease with which it can processed by web applications.

most widely supported raster data format TIFF is a bitmap image format similar to GIF, PNG or JPEG

Reference: GIS Data - The Beginner's Guide to GIS | Mango (mangomap com)

Data Visualization

Image Source: https://bnhr xyz/

Choropleth Maps use shading or color to represent data values for different regions or polygons such as visualizing demographic or socioeconomic data

Reference: https://www researchgate net

Climatic factors used for suitability mapping: average mean distribution of amount of rainfall (a), relative humidity (b) and temperature (c) in the months of March to November (1990-2018)

Heat maps use shading to represent the intensity or density of data values in an area heat maps are often used for visualizing spatial patterns and data such as climatic factors

Data Visualization

Reference: https://www researchgate net

Isoline map is a type of map that uses lines to represent data they connect points on a map that have the same value such as temperature elevation or rainfall.

Data Analysis

Data analysis uses science and mathematics in GIS which allows it to perform both spatial and non-spatial (attribute) queries and computations; through this you can solve location problems to measure quantify and understand our world better

Image source: https://www giphy com

Data Improvement

Data improvement involves building new data sets from the ground up or updating existing Geographic data it's important because it ensures that the data being used is accurate up-to-date and relevant to the problem at hand

Ground-truthing

It involves physically visiting the location or area of interest to gather firsthand information and compare it with existing data sources or reference materials.

Photo interpretation

It involves the identification and/or measurement of various targets or objects in an image in order to extract useful information about them Typically, the information from the interpreted image provides descriptive data about earth surface features like structure, characteristics, quality, condition, relationship of and between objects

Biggest Industries that uses GIS

Urban Planning

Urban planners use GIS to model and analyze Urban Land Use transportation and infrastructure this helps planners make informed decisions about development and growth

Image source: https://www youtube com/watch?v=aFRqSJFp-I0

Emergency

Emergency Management uses GIS to manage and respond to natural disasters

disease outbreaks and other emergencies

Marketing

Location data is a powerful tool for business growth Businesses can use this location-based information to maximize their efforts. They will know the perfect areas for launching a business and have an image of a potential client, their needs, even their income

In energy management, they use GIS to manage and optimize energy distribution networks monitor energy usage and identify opportunities for energy conservation

Natural Resources

Environmental Management leverages GIS to monitor and manage natural resources track species habitats and predict the effects of climate change

Current and Future Trends of GIS

Common Types of GIS Software

Introduction of Quantum GIS

Installing QGIS

Scan through the parts of the QGIS Interface

Changing the look and layout of the QGIS Interface

Manage and Install Plugins dialog

Changing System settings

REMINDER

For this crash course, we will be using the online QGIS training manuals You may access the manuals in the link below:

https://docs qgis org/3 34/en/docs/training_manual/

Make sure that your installed Google Earth Pro and QGIS version 3.34.4-1 (latest most stable release) is properly working in your units

*Other versions of QGIS may have a varying interface as presented in this training manual

Some datasets included in the online modules will be changed to the datasets in the local setting for better representation

Additional lessons which are not in the online training modules will be included in this training Instructions will be provided on the PowerPoint presentation

Software

Free software are software that adhere to the Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, which are:

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. 1.

The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish 2

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. 3.

The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Open source software are those that have licenses which provide royalty-free use and reuse of the software together with open access to the source code. By convention, these open source licenses are those that comply with the Open Source Definition as provided for by the Open Source Initiative Open source not only guarantees free access to the software and source code but also the ability to redistribute the software with no additional costs.

Because of the open nature of open source software, it is also a great software development model where everyone is free to update, upgrade, modify, and share their modifications to the community.

Parts of the QGIS Interface

There are six main parts of the QGIS User Interface – the Menu Bar, Map Canvas, Toolbars, Panels, Status Bar, and the Locator

Menu Bar – provides access to various QGIS features using a standard hierarchical menu

Map Canvas – the main map area where the layers show up and all your visualization is done

1 Toolbar – provides access to most of the same functions as the menus. Plus additional tools for interacting with the map.

2. Panels - panels are similar to toolbars but instead of buttons, they provide an interface to more complex functions and features The Layer Panel and the Browser Panel are examples. Similar to toolbars, they can be moved and docked around the Map Canvas The list of panels can be found, activated, and deactivated from the Menu bar under View ‣ Panels

3 Status Bar – show coordinates and scale of the Map View.

Locator Bar - the Locator bar is found on the bottom left corner of the QGIS interface. It allows the user to easily access layers, fields, processing algorithms, and other things in QGIS. This is one of the most powerful features of QGIS.

Click the View menu 1. Observe the Panels menu.

2. Select the Toolbars and Panels you want to show in the user interface Some of the useful Panels include the Layer Styling and Processing Toolbox

3 Move the Toolbars and Panels to the positions that make the most sense for you. 4.

QGIS Plugins

The ability to add, create, and extend QGIS’ functionality via plugins is one of its most powerful features As of QGIS 3 34 1, there are more than 1,000 plugins available for the user to download and improve upon

Plugins can be installed in three (3) ways:

Via the Manage and Install Plugins Dialog (Plugins ‣ Manage and Install Plugins) 1

Installing from ZIP which can be accessed under the Install from ZIP tab in the Manage and Install Plugins dialog.

Manually adding the source code in your QGIS profile’s plugins folder

The Manage and Install Plugins Dialog connects to the QGIS Official Plugin repository (or any repository that you indicate in the Settings Tab) to fetch plugins available for your version of QGIS It has five (5) tabs:

All Tab – shows ALL the plugins available for your QGIS version including those that are already installed on your machine

Installed Tab – shows only the plugins installed on your machine

Not installed Tab – shows the plugins that are not installed on your machine

Install from ZIP – allows you to install plugins from a ZIP file

Settings Tab – gives you options on when to check for plugin updates

Plugins

QGIS

Install Plugin in the bottom right corner of the Manage and Install plugins dialog 1. Check if the plugins are successfully installed. 2.

Install the following plugins by searching for them in the All tab and clicking

QGIS Plugins

Install the following plugins by searching for them in the All tab and clicking Install Plugin in the bottom right corner of the Manage and Install plugins dialog 1. Check if the plugins are successfully installed 2. Click Search QMS 3.

System settings

Type Google Satellite (or any map you like as basemap) in the Search string bar 4 Then Click Add 5. You can change the look-and-feel of QGIS under Settings ‣ Options

Mapping

Data Layers

Review the common data types and file formats

Loading layers in QGIS

Checking of Layer Properties

Loading GPX file

Loading CSV and other Delimited Text files

Review the common data types Vector Raster

NAME FUNCTION

SHP contains geometry of a feature

DBF contains the attribute data.

PRJ contains information about the “projection” and “coordinate system”

SHX allows GIS systems to find features within the SHP file more quickly

NAME

CSV - Comma Separated Value File

File GeoDatabase

Tab File

FUNCTION

It’s literally a text file where columns are separated by commas and rows are separated by line breaks

collection of files in a folder on disk that can store, query, and manage both spatial and nonspatial data.

This format is very similar to the Shapefile and is the default format

KML the default file format of Google Earth.

GeoJSON

GeoTIFF

It’s primarily used by software developers due to the ease with which it can processed by web applications

most widely supported raster data format. TIFF is a bitmap image format similar to GIF, PNG or JPEG.

Loading of Layers

There are several ways to load layers in QGIS These include: Drag-and-drop the layer in the QGIS Map Canvas or Layer Panel This might be the easiest way to load a layer in QGIS but is not the recommended approach as there are gotchas when using this approach like when loading non-spatial tabular data like CSVs

1. Using the Browser Panel.

2. Using the Data Source Manager.

3. Using the Data Source Manager toolbar and the Manage Layers toolbar

Check the Browser Panel If you can’t find the Browser Panel, you can make it visible under View ‣ Panels ‣ Browser Panel in the Menu bar

Notice how the drives and folders can be expanded to show the subfolders inside them.

3 You can add a favorite directory to the Browser Panel by right-clicking on Favorites and adding the directory.

Locate the Module 2 - Layers in QGIS folder in the file tree (note where you saved or downloaded the file) You should be able to see the necessary data for this workbook. In my example on the right, I linked the aforementioned folder as one of my Favorites so I can easily go to it from the Browser Panel

4. Check the files inside the folder There are several of them From the file tree itself, we can already get an idea of the files and layers that we can load in QGIS The icons on the left of the names indicate whether the data is a vector, a raster, a database, or simple tabular data.

Loading of Layers

Right click on gadm41 PHL 0 boundary shp and click Layer Properties This opens the layer properties window Notice the information provided in the window What is the geometry of the layer? What CRS is used? How many features are in the layer? 1

Open the Data Source Manager It contains tabs on the right side that pertains to the kind of data source you want to load or connect to Similar to the Browser, you can load and connect several kinds of data from the Data Source Manager.

To load vectors, go to the Vector tab Files, files within a Directory, a Database, and even remote files via a Protocol like HTTP, cloud, etc can be loaded

Let’s load the vector file (gadm41_PHL_1_boundary.shp). This layer is a polygon layer of the municipalities in the province of Zamboanga Sibugay.

Source Type: File; Source: Select the dataset_layers for_zambo ‣ shapefiles, using the Search button button then Click Add

If there are more than 1 vector file inside the file, QGIS will ask you to select which ones to load, try to load raster layers in the Raster tab

Loading of GPX File

There are two ways in which GPS data can be loaded into QGIS and translate them into a series of GPS coordinates. The first is by directly connecting the GPS handset into the PC and uploading the GPS coordinates in GPX format The second is when GPS coordinates have already been encoded in comma separated values (CSV) using a spreadsheet software.

This section includes demonstration of the following:

Loading GPS data from the GPS handset

Creating CSV files

Loading CSV files

Loading GPS data from the GPS handset

From the Side Toolbar, select Add GPS Layer 1

In the Data Source Manager Window, browse to exercise_data/gpx folder and select osm transport Zamboanga Sibugay.gpx 2.

On the Select Vector Layers to Add window that will appear, select only the waypoints 3 Click OK 4. Click Add 5.

Creating CSV File

Another way to load the GPS Data to QGIS is through the encoded coordinates in the excel file which will be exported as CSV file (comma separated value) to be readable in QGIS

Creating CSV files

1. In the exercise/csv folder, open the csv file using an MS excel or Google Sheets 2 Observe the data in the table 3.

X- longitude Y- latitude

name- Name of the feature fclass- type of the feature

Loading of CSV File

From the Side Toolbar, select Add Delimited Text Layer

1. In the Data Source Manager Window, browse to dataset_layers/csv folder and select waypoints letters

2 Under Geometry Definition select the following:

3. Point Coordinates

X field : X Y Field: Y

Geometry CRS: EPSG :4326- WGS 84

4. Click Add

Before we proceed in styling our layers

Save your map project.

Click Project from the Menu Bar and select Save 1

You may also just click the save icon from the Project Toolbar 2.

Make sure to remember the location of your saved project for easier access for future use 3.

Styling Layers

Enable Layer Styling Panel

Vector Rendering

Raster Rendering

Enable Layer Styling Panel

Another powerful feature of this panel is the Live update checkbox. Tick it and your changes are automatically rendered in the map canvas as you go on You no longer need to Click the Apply button

To activate the panel, Click View ‣ Panels, then tick Layer styling

Vector Rendering

To demonstrate this example, we’ll use two example datasets; Transportation and Administrative boundary of Zamboanga Sibugay province 1.

Add the two vector layers into QGIS; Click the Add vector layer button or use the browser panel 2.

Double click the polygon vector layer, which is also the administrative boundary layer of Zamboanga Sibugay province in the Philippines

Select the Symbology Tab in the menu that appears 4.

Change the Fill color to Transparent fill Tip: Click the drop down arrow under Fill color

The result should be no fill option has no color. 6.

The next step is to symbolize the point layer which is also the Transportation layer Double click the Transportation layer to open the Layer Properties dialogue Change the render type from Single Symbol to Categorized, Select the Value as name. The value represents the field of interest. Specify the Symbol and Color ramp Then Click classify 1

Raster Rendering

Double click the raster layer which is also the ASTER DEM layer. This also means it’s a normalized dataset and can therefore be visualized as a choropleth map.

1. Select the symbology tab in the menu that appears 2 Change the styling mode to ‘Singleband pseudocolor’ 3. Specify the interpolation, color ramp and mode. 4. Click classify The result is a choropleth map showing the lowest and highest elevation across the Zamboanga Sibugay province

Making Maps

Map Elements

Exporting the Map Canvas

Designing Maps with Map Composer

Map Elements

Designing Maps with Export Map Canvas

You may load the following layers from the shapefiles folder in your exercise data folder

gadm41 PHL 0 boundary osm roads zamboanga_sibugay

gadm41 PHL 1 boundary osm transport_zamboanga_sibugay

gadm41 PHL 2 boundary ASTGTMV003_DEM

gadm41 PHL 3 boundary

Designing Maps with Export Map Canvas

First method: Export the map canvas without the print layout

The data layers should already be added to the QGIS canvas. The layers can then be styled to communicate information in your data Add map decorations by clicking View ‣ Decorations

1. Select your preferred map decoration For example you may add the Title label, Scale bar and Copyright Label. For each decoration you’ll have to specify settings in a dialogue box

n y , y settings in a dialogue box

The final step is to export the map to either image or pdf format To do this, Click Project ‣ Import/Export and then select your preferred export format. The export dialogue below should appear

4 The final step is to export the map to either image or pdf format To do this, Click Project ‣ Import/Export and then select your preferred export format. The export dialogue below should appear.

5 Click Save The map in the qgis canvas will be saved as a pdf or image document Browse to the location where the file is saved and you ’ re now able to print or share the map.

Designing Maps with Map Composer

Click Project in the Menu Bar and select New Print Layout

In the Create Print Layout window that will prompt, set the name of your layout and click OK

On the Map Composer window, Click Layout and select Printer Page Setup to set your map size and layout For this activity set the following click OK:

Paper Size: A4

Orientation: Landscape

To open the Print Composer template, select File → New Print Composer

Opening the Print Composer provides you with a blank canvass. The components of the map composer are explained below:

Menu and Toolbar – all tools for adding and arranging map elements, map navigation, and export options

1. Map Canvass – where you compose your map 2. Composition, Item Properties, and Command History window – where you customize various rendering options for your map elements. The Composition tab allows you to set paper size, orientation, output file resolution and other printing options The Item Properties tab displays properties for the selected map element Click Select/Move item to activate options of the element in the Item Properties tab

To add the map that you see in your QGIS project to your map composer, click the Add Item from the Menu Bar and click Add Map. Once your cursor change into a cross, drag and position it anywhere on the map You may change the size of your map by adjusting the edges

Introduction to Google Earth Pro

Basic Overview

Google Earth Pro is a powerful yet simple tool for viewing information geographically whether it is viewing climate information, analyzing change over time, seeing the world the same way you ’ re used to seeing, or even remembering routes.

Interface

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

- offers options that deal with opening and saving files

- on the left hand side of the screen contains a few different modules

- gives access to a variety of features provided within Google Earth, including Placemarks, creating polygons, , image overlays, historical imagery, and so forth

- used to adjust the location of the view, the map orientation, the zoom level, and the tilt

- viewing the data

- when the image in the viewer was captured via satellite

- current coordinates

- the altitude that Google Earth is currently viewing the world from

Toolbar

Hide/ Show Sidebar Add polygon Add image overlay

Add Placemark Add path Record a tour

Show Historical Imagery Switch Between Sky, Earth, Planets Email Save image View in Google Earth Web

Show sunlight Show/ Hide ruler View in Google Maps Print

The Google Earth Toolbar offers tooltips that pop up to identify each tool as the mouse passes over it.

For example, the Hide/Show Sidebar button toggles the visibility of the three panes on the left side of the user interface on and off The Add Placemark, Add Polygon, Add Path, and Add Image Overlay buttons are for creating new data

Navigation Controls

Image source: https://serc carleton edu/download/images/190554/google earth pro user int erface

Drag the ring with the "N" on it to rotate the view Click the "N" to orient the globe so that north is at the top Dragging the mouse while the left or right button is held down can also be used to navigate To use the mouse to pan the 3D Viewer, hold down the left mouse button and drag the view in the direction that you would like to move it With the right mouse button held down, you can rotate the 3D Viewer clockwise by dragging the mouse to the left, and you can rotate it counterclockwise by dragging the mouse to the right

The mouse wheel can be used to navigate as well. To zoom in with the mouse, turn the mouse wheel away from you To zoom out with the mouse, turn the mouse wheel down toward you With the right mouse button held down, you can also zoom in by moving the mouse down, and zoom out by moving it up.

Searching

You can use the three tabs, respectively, to:

Search for places

Get directions

Show a list of recent searches

Get directions

Copy search results to the Google Earth My Places folder

Copy search results to the clipboard as KML

Print search results

The Places pane is where third-party data and your own data are listed and organized Data that has been loaded or created during the current session generally resides in the Temporary Places folder. Documents, folders, and place markers can be dragged to reorganize them in the Places pane

Placemark

To create a new placemark, first navigate to the location in the 3D Viewer where you would like to put the new placemark Then you can create it by clicking the Add Placemark button on the toolbar or right-clicking the container listed in the Places Pane in which you would like to put the new placemark, and choosing Add, and then Placemark. There are other means of initiating this process as well. In either case, the New Placemark dialog box will appear

Google offers a huge amount of mappable data from its database through the Layers Pane The growing set of layers include roads, volcanoes, 3D buildings, terrain, borders and labels, weather, photographs, earthquakes, news, YouTube video, and much more.

Draw

Use tabs to access other properties

Click to add one point at a time or, Drag to add points continuously in freeform mode

Description will appear in placemark balloon

A link or web image can be added by entering the URL, or a local image can be added

Click to add one point at a time or, Drag to add points continuously in freeform mode

The Add Path and Add Polygon buttons on the toolbar initiate the process of creating new paths or polygons, respectively

Once the corresponding dialog box opens, you can draw the path or polygon by either clicking or left-dragging the mouse. The tabs in the dialog box provide access to various properties.

Name will appear as a label

Layout

There are option to add additional features to your printout

Map elements can be checked or unchecked

There are options to save an image in much larger resolution

Save image to disk

If you want to keep the settings after closing Google Earth Pro, then be sure to save your print settings

The map making tool in Google Earth Pro is a set of advanced printing options You can add additional features to your printout, including a title with description, a legend, and a custom HTML box that you can use to add more complex stuff, like your company logo or even a web page All the elements are optional and can be moved around The Google logo and copyright notices are also movable, but cannot be removed as they are required to be present by the license agreement.

Final image saved

Styling of base map