GEOportal Quick Start Guide

Welcome to GEOportal: the gateway to Earth Observation data, information and services!

To quickly start using and exploiting the portal's full potential please read through the following guide.

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Finding Information

From the GEOportal homepage there are three main methods for retrieving portal resources.

• Free Text Search >>
• Using Societal Benefit Areas (SBA) >>
• Based on geographical location >>

In addition there are some common elements in searching for information:

• Standard search component >>
• GEOSS Federated search >>
• Detailed Resource Descriptions >>

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Browse Using Free Text Search

By entering search terms into search field in the title bar it is possible to conduct a parallel search between GEOportal resources and a GEOSS federated search through the USGS Clearinghouse.

Simply type in text into the search box and click on GO to conduct the search

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Browse GEOportal resources by Societal Benefit Areas (SBA)

On the left side of the homepage is a series of icons that represent the thematic Societal Benefit Areas of the GEOportal. Selecting one of these items opens a pre-filtered set of search results grouped by categories.

You will be driven to a page where all the results are grouped into different resource categories.

If you want you can also refine your search by Societal Benefit Area sub-category and/or by Geographical location, in order to better target your results to your interests.

On the right menu you will retrieve some showcases of datasets (images and maps) matching your criteria.

Within the search results page it is possible to further refine results by sub-category with then SBA:

• Select specifc catalogues
• Access a showcase of datasets

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Browse GEOportal resources by Geographical location

To utilise the globe tool in the centre of the homepage [note this tool requires Flash] click on it to activate it and use the various controls to zoom in and select a country, or region of choice. Once you have zoomed in, using the cursor you can select a region of interest and click the regions and countries of interest.

You will be driven to a page where all the results matching your criteria (i.e. all the resources available for the geographical area you are interested in) are grouped into different resource categories.

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Search Results

Each search path returns a core element of results, although the precise view of each varies slightly. The core element consists of a central block of search results filtered according to the search terms and parameters. The results are filtered according to a categorisation based on the type and nature of the date.

Clicking on the  and  expands the category search results and provide a full list of information in the form of title and a short teaser text. Selecting the resource of interest to open the full description of the service offering. In addition elements that are found in the GEOSS Registry are marked .

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GEOSS Federated Search

The GEOSS Federated Search passes your search request through the USGS Clearinghouse registry of resources. Accessing this components is possible in two ways:

1. When searching by location or SBA click on the icon in the upper right of the page
2. Free text search results, by default, are also parsed through the Federated search

The results screen is divided into four elements.

• An upper horizontal element that allows refinement of results by various parameters such as geolocation, SBA and free text.
• Second horizontal element that contains images and maps relevant to the search criteria
• Main body left column that contains search results from within the GEOportal. This has the same expandable and collapsable navigation as the other search components and allows you to acccess a detailed record on the record.
• Main body right column that contains search results from within the GEOSS Federated search component. Selecting an item from under here gives detailed information on the resource as provided to the USGS.

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Resource Information Page

When selecting on an item from a GEOportal search results page a new page loads with detailed information on the resource.

The page is split into a number of elements

• On the left are details on the content provider including links to website and the GEOSS registry component.
• The main central block contains a description of the resource
• At the bottom are links to related resources held within the GEOportal

 

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