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The Oregon Explorer can be accessed by anyone with access to the internet. The Oregon Explorer is organized according to two schemes: topic-based and place-based.
Explore available information within each of 7 comprehensive topic areas (we call these "super topics"): 1) animals and plants; 2) climate, water, and air; 3) coast, ocean, and marine; 4) forestry and agriculture; 5) land use and planning; 6) landscapes and ecosystems; and 7) people and communities. In an effort to enable many user selected pathways to a desired piece of information, you will find that some topics can be accessed from more than one super topic. For any topic selected, you will want to take notice of the types of information that are available in the header bar. Those topics with the most information will enable you to select from any one of the following formats:
Then through a geographic interface, Oregon Explorer information can be accessed for any place within Oregon. Choose a location with a right click of your mouse, and you will soon find the nested geographies for your place of interest. Click on any of these geographies and information will be organized and made accessible to you.
When it was first launched in June 2007, the Oregon Explorer information was organized into five basin portals, seven topic portals, and two data portals. A user survey conducted in 2014 revealed that this portal framework was limiting and unsustainable. Users would use a particular portal, and never realize that there was a vast amount of content and data for other topics or places in Oregon. In a desire to be more comprehensive, integrative, and technologically responsive, the Oregon Explorer was redesigned in June 2015 with a move away from the portal-based framework.
Some of our tools are built with Silverlight and require the Silverlight plugin in a browser to work. Browser support for plugin based applications has been decreasing. If you have access to Internet Explorer, these Silverlight tools should continue to work.
If you want to use Firefox, there is an extended release edition that can be used. Firefox Extended Release.
For Chrome, you can add the IE-On-Chrome extension to continue using the Silverlight version of the tool.
We are migrating all of our tools to cross browser compatible html viewers that will also work on tablets and handheld devices.
The Oregon Explorer Map Viewer is one of our most popular tools. Our thanks to Ryan Johnson who was at StreamWebs, a student stewardship network sponsored by the Oregon State University Extension Service, when he created these informative video tutorials with funds from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. When you view them, you will notice that both the Oregon Explorer and the Oregon Explorer Map Viewer interfaces are out-of-date and have changed considerably. What has not changed is much of the functionality that Ryan demonstrates. For this reason, we have decided to keep them accessible until they can be updated.
Tutorials: