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Welcome to the official 2nd Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas (2nd PBBA) Mapping Tools Website
Developed by the Penn State Institutes of the Environment
With this site you can do the following:
Read below for instructions...
Locate an Atlas Block:
This site can be used to help you find the particular 2nd PBBA block where you live or where you make any of your breeding bird observations. You can zoom directly to a point by entering a latitude and longitude. Be sure to use decimal degree format and always include a minus (-) sign before the longitude. Or, you can type in a street address. Be sure to enter both the address and the associated zip code. When you click "Refresh Map," the point or address you entered will be shown as a yellow circle on the map within the Atlas block, which is outlined with green lines and identified with a small number, such as 62B43. The ability to locate 2nd PBBA blocks for a specific lat/long is very helpful, for example, if you have been hiking or boating through an area covering several Atlas blocks, all the while collecting waypoints to go along with breeding bird sightings that you make. It can even help if you're completely lost somewhere in the state but not too panic-stricken to keep atlassing!
If you don't have an exact point to start with (but you do at least know what county you're in!), you can pick a county or Atlas region or enter a zipcode and then use the "Zoom In" and "Recenter" tools until you've found the exact location and associated 2nd PBBA block you are looking for. To use the tools on the tool bar, you must first click on the tool and then click somewhere on the map to effect the change (e.g., if you click the "Zoom In" button and then click on the current map, the page will refresh with the map zoomed in around the point you clicked). Clicking on the map will always show the effect of the most recently selected tool, so you can click any tool once and every time you click on the map it will do the selected action (zoom in, zoom out, or recenter) again.
Customize an Atlas block map by adding or removing selected GIS layers:
You can use this site to create custom 2nd PBBA block maps that show fewer or more features than the standard topo and aerial block maps available on the other 2nd PBBA websites (www.pabirdatlas.org or bird.atlasing.org/PA). Some layers will be displayed only at certain zoom levels, and some layers cannot be displayed together on the same map. In general, the more you zoom in, the more layers will become visible. All of the optional layers will be visible (if they are present) at the scale of an individual Atlas block. To select layers, click on the "Legend and Data Layers" button. Click (toggle, or check off) the small boxes next to the geographic information system (GIS) data layer(s) you want to view, and click the "Refresh map" button at the bottom of the page.
Note, the numbers associated with the small, medium, and large wetland layers can be used (along with the block ID) to designate the exact wetlands where qualitative or quantitative marsh bird surveys are conducted. Similarly, the numbers associated with the BBA Survey Points layer within each block are the points visited by Atlas field crew members for conducting counts used in estimating bird abundances for the Atlas (up to the first eight accessible points were used for the abundance surveys in each block). Lastly, although you can zoom in, zoom out, and recenter across block boundaries and your selected GIS layers will continue to be displayed, this website is designed to create printable maps (pdf's) only for full Atlas blocks.
Print a customized map:
To print a custom 2nd PBBA block map, first enter a Block ID under "Printable Map," and click "Make Map." This will open up another window where you can confirm that the layers selected below will appear on your block map. Note, if you have been exploring the appearance of your displayed map by checking on and off various layers, when you go to create a printable map, the program assumes you want to print the layers that currently are displayed. At this stage, you can add or delete layers for the printable version of the map. Click the "Print Map" button at the bottom of the "Legend and Data Layers" page and a .pdf will open up that can be printed.
For printing custom maps you have displayed on your monitor at larger (> 1 block) or smaller (< 1 block) scales, or centered to include parts of two or more adjacent blocks, you can use the print-screen command on your keyboard by holding down the Shift key and pressing the PrintScrn key (usually is located to the right of the function keys at the top of your keyboard). After "capturing" the displayed image on your computer screen, simply open a photo-editing program and "paste" it as a new image. You can then crop the image around the map portion and save or print it as a jpeg file.