Natural Resources Canada
Government of Canada
Digital Geoscience Maps
Tutorial: Finding a map

Let's suppose we want to solve the following problem. We wish to find units in a bedrock map around Frobisher Bay.

Be sure the radio button next to "Index - Geology Maps" is selected, to make that layer active.

To find the map, we can either find it:

  1. spatially by zooming and panning to the location, then using the Select Tool, select
  2. or we can use the Find Tool, find, to search for the map.

Let's try both ways:

  1. Spatially
    1. First we will zoom in to the southern tip of Baffin Island.
    2. Click the zoom button, then use the mouse to draw a rectangle around the maps there.
    3. Click the Selection Tool, select, then click within one of the orange rectangles. When you find one with title "Frobisher Bay", you're done!
    4. We can now display this map (see below).

    If it isn't on-screen, you may have to click the Pan Tool, pan, and drag the map around until you see it, or use the four blue arrows to pan in each cardinal direction. (Hint: Frobisher Bay is very close to Iqaluit).

    Once you find the map that contains Iqaluit, use the Select Tool, select, to display the attributes of the map. Notice that the title is "Frobisher Bay" and that this is an A Series map with series number "1979".

  2. Now let's try finding the same map with the Find Tool:
    1. Press your browser reload button to restart the application.
    2. Now click the find button to activate the Find Tool.
    3. Select the field "Title" for the search. Type "Frobisher" in the input field, then press the "Find String" button.
    4. One record is found. Click the number of the record to show the location of the map and to highlight it. We note that the title is "Frobisher Bay" and that this is an A Series map with series number "1979". We have found the map we are looking for.


Displaying the map and getting more information

Now that we found the map, we want to see this map. To display the map, find the title in the list of layers. then, click the checkbox checkbox for the map to be visible and also click the active button active to make this the active map. Then, click the "Refresh Map" button. You can use the button icon to display the map's legend.