Week 7

Tasks

• Research more on the Battle of the Somme and find more things to add to my front lines map
• Add new material to the front lines map
• Georeferencing

Research

As I began doing more research on the Battle of the Somme to add to my front lines map I was finding so much great information that I could use, but for some reason it was really hard for me to visualize. So I decided to print off a blank map of the front lines of the Battle of the Somme. I used this to draw on and write notes to keep my thoughts straight.

The blank map I used for my notes

The first thing I decided to add to my map was the other mine explosions that happened on the first day of the battle. On the pre-modified map I only had the Lochnagar and Hawthorn Ridge craters. These were the only ones that I really knew about because we visited these sites during our class trip to Northern France. In total there were eight large mine explosions and eleven small mine explosions.

• At the Lochnagar site there was one large mine and two small mines that were detonated.
• At the Hawthorn site there was one large mines that were exploded.
• At the Y-Sap site there was one large mine explosion.
• At the Tambour site there were three large mine explosions all detonated near each other.
• At the Mametz site there were two large mine explosions, one at Bulgar Point and one at Casino Point, surrounded by nine other small mine explosions.

 

A picture of how Lochnagar Crater looks today

Now that I have all of the mine explosions located on the map I believe it gives the viewer a better idea (visually) of the events that took place on the first day of battle and how such an extravagant beginning led to such an uneventful battle.

After locating the mine explosion locations I decided to break down the Battle of the Somme by the smaller battles that happened within the five months leading up to the end of the battle.

1. The Battle of Albert (July 1 - July 13) - This battle led to the capture of Mametz Wood, the city of Contalmaison, and Trones Wood.
2. The Battle of Bazentin Ridge (July 14 - July 17) - This battle was an assault from the city of Bazentin to the city of Longueval.
3. The Battle of Delville Wood (July 15 - September 3) - This battle led to the capture of part of Delville Wood and the whole of the city of Longueval.
4. The Battle of Pozieres Ridge (July 23 - September 3) - This battle led to the securing of the city of Pozieres.
5. The Battle of Guillemont (September 3 - September 6) - This battle led to the capture of the city of Guillemont and part of Leuze Wood.
6. The Battle of Ginchy (September 9) - This battle led to the clearing of the city of Ginchy and the capture of the rest of Delville Wood.
7. The Battle of Flers - Courcelette (September 15 - September 22) - This was when tanks were first introduced into the Battle of the Somme. This battle led to the capture of the city of Flers and the clearing of High Wood.
8. The Battle of Morval (September 25 - September 28) - This battle (with the assistance of a tank) led to the capture of the cities of Morval, Lesboeufs, Gueudecourt, and Combes.
9. The Battle of Thiepval (September 26 - September 28) - This battle led to the capture of the city of Thiepval and a German strong point located of Mouquet Farm.
10. The Battle of Le Transloy (October 1 - October 18) - The objective was to capture the city of Eaucourt L' Abbaye. This mission was unsuccessful.
11. The Battle of Ancre Heights (October 1 - November 11) - This battle led to the capture of the Schwaben Redoubt (a german strong point) and the temporary capture of the Regina Trench.
12. The Battle of Ancre (November 13 - November 18) - The objective was to secure the area between Beaumont-Hamel and Serre. This mission was unsuccessful.

The blank map after I added all of my notes and illustrations

Adding New Material

Now all I had to do was add the new information I had acquired onto my pre-existing front lines map of the Battle of the Somme. The first thing I did was I added the new craters and wrote descriptions for each of them. I wasn't a huge fan of the symbol I had originally chosen for the craters (The red triangle with an explanation point in the center), so I chose a new symbol that is orange and somewhat resembles an explosion. 

Picture of the newly added mines with their new symbol

While I was adding the new mine craters I was placing them in the positions that history has shown they were in I figured out that my original front lines were not exactly in the correct position. This put a lot of the mine explosions well behind the front line from the beginning of the battle on July 1st. So I made the executive decision to re-draw all of the front lines from the Battle of the Somme. Something that was different this time was instead of using the free-hand drawing tool I used the regular line tool where you keep clicking and it automatically connects the dots. This was much easier for me because the free-hand lines were very touchy and I would keep messing up. Along with the correctly placed mine explosions and the fact that I've drawn these lines about 5 times for each date, I added other features that were significant to the battles within the battle to help me re-draw the front lines. To my front lines map I added the land marks; the Schwaben Redoubt, Mouquet Farm, High Wood, Bazentin Wood, Mametz Wood, Delville Wood, Trones Wood, and Leuze Wood. 

Map of the land marks I added that were significant to the battles

While these land marks helped me draw the front lines for each date, you can also see how they really helped to shape the front lines. The lines tend to go around certain points, which shows you at that date who controlled what land marks. 

After I finished adding all of the mines, land marks, and re-drawing the front lines it was time to begin adding the battles to the map. This is something I had to think about for a while because I wasn't exactly sure how to represent the battles of the map with the tools that were available to me. I decided to draw circles around landmarks and cities that were important in the battle and then adding a flag near the circled items to give a description of the occurrences from the battle. As an example I will show you the battles of Albert and Bazentin. 

The Battle of Albert

The Battle of Albert is represented by circles around Mametz Wood, the city of Contalmaison, and Trones Wood. I just used the circle line tool to draw the circles. These are the land marks that were captured by the British in the Battle of Albert. There is then a green flag you can click on which represents that the objectives of this battle were achieved. This information explains the occurrences during this battle. 

The other type of explanation for a battle I has used thus far would be how I represented the Battle of Bazentin.

The Battle of Bazentin

The Battle of Bazentin is represented by an arrow starting at the city of Bazentin and pointing to the city of Longueval. This shows the assault towards Longueval that happened during these days. As you can see there is no need for the informational flag in this battle because there is only the one feature. All of the information can be found by clicking on the arrow. 

Something I found out while I was working on the Battle of Bazentin was when you draw a line you can double click on it and the program adds extra points to the line that you can move to your liking. This is how I made the arrow curve. This would have been nice to know when I decided to re-draw the front lines. I possibly could have just moved the lines, but by then I had already completed that task. 

So far I have only added up to the Battle of Morval on my map, and already I have come to a realization. To present this map I will need to turn on and off each battle as I show it, because all together the map looks very clustered and doesn't make sense.

Clustered front lines / battles map

Unfinished map: Front Lines of the Battle of the Somme

Georeferencing

There are several maps I have that I'm going to georeference. Georeferencing - Aligning geographic data to a known coordinate system so it can be viewed, queried, and analyzed with other geographic data. Georeferencing may involve shifting, rotating, scaling, skewing, and in some cases warping, rubber sheeting, or orthorectifying the data (As stated by Esri Support).

First what you need to do is add a basemap and locate the area that you are going to be focusing on. After you have found your area of relevance you will click the Add Data button and click on the map that you are wishing to georeference. When ArcMap attempts to upload the map a pop-up will occur on your screen. This pop-up is just explaining that the map your are attempting to upload cannot be projected because it does not have any spatial reference. Which pretty much means the map doesn't have coordiantes so ArcMap is unsure as to where the map you uploaded should be placed on the basemap. You will just click ok and the map will be placed in a random spot on the map. The next step is to pull up the georeferencing toolbar. This is found by clicking on the Customize tab, clicking on toolbars, and selecting to bring up the Georeferencing toolbar.

 

The Georeferencing toolbar will look like this

 

 

Next you will click the Viewer tool on the toolbar and this will bring up your selected map. After that is brought up you will choose the Add Control Points tool on the toolbar. To begin the georeferencing process you will click on a specific point on the map that you uploaded, and then click on the same point on the basemap. You will continue to do this and the ArcMap program will shift the map to fit on the basemap.

 

 



A map of the front lines of the Battle of the Somme that is georeferenced

 

Question: What do I do with a photo once it has been goereferenced?

 

I am attempting to find photos that I could georeference of the front lines for the individual battles of the Somme. I had maps but they didn't have enough geographical points, which is necessary to accuratly georeference a map.

 

 

While looking for trench maps of the Battle of the Somme I found this legend that explains what all of the figures on the map mean. Most trench maps don't have a legend that go along with them.

 

 



Week 6

 

Tasks

• Begin to dig into the books that I checked out from the McIntyre Library
• Add descriptions to the features on my ArcGIS Online front lines map
• Continue searching for more useful sources
• Road blocks
• Future Goals

 

 

 

Literature

 

The Somme: The day-by-day account

This was the first of two books that I rented from the McIntyre Library. When I decided to check this book out I had only skimmed throught the pages, but I was intrigued by the numerous amount of maps that it contained. But once I started to look into the book I realized that this wasn't what I was expecting and it wouldn't help me with where I wanted to go with my project. My project for the Battle of the Somme is a very broad overview of the battle with focuses on key events and the change in the front lines throughout the battle. This book was very, very specific as to what happened each day and even the slightest movement or action of each regiment. The maps in this book were magnificant, but much too specific for my project that I am working on.

 

 

The 1916 Battle of the Somme

This was the second book that I rented from the McIntyre Library. Right away this book caught my eye because it seemed to be written in the same format as the project that I am working on. It takes the battle in chunks and focuses on the main events for a certain amount of time.

 

This book begins with a chapter on the concept, planning, and preperation for the Battle of the Somme.  Before the Battle of the Somme General Joffre stated, "We have to destory the moral of the German army and nation." While that may have been the main goal of the overall war, the Battle of the Somme was more in order to divert attention. "The original objectives were; 1) to relieve the pressure on Verdun, 2) to assist our Allies in the other theatres of war by stopping any further transfer of German troops from the Western Front, 3) to wear down the strength of the forces opposed to us." This chapter also focuses on the processes of obtaining artillary and the training of infantry men.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                        

 

The second chapter in this book is The First of July. The beginning of this chapter goes through maps of the cities Montauban, Mametz, Fricourt, Ovillers La Boisselle, Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel, Serre, Gommecourt and shows the allignment of trenches and front lines of each side. Also talked about were the mine explosions during the first day and of course the massacre that took place on the first day.

 

 

 

An example of a trench map located in this chapter

 

 

 



Another topic located in this chapter was message sending edicate on the front lines. This included what was, and was not acceptable to send over the lines.

 

 

The five orders for message sending on the front lines

 

 

This is as far as I've gotten in this book thus far. I will continue to keep digging for more information as well as continue to look for more sources to complete my project.

 

 

 

Descriptions

 

In my previous blog I showed you the project I had strated on my map from the front lines of The Battle of the Somme, but I had not yet inserted the descriptions for each feature I had put on the map. But before I did that I found out you can add a summary and description for the entirety of the map. So this is what I decided to work on first. To get to this all you had to do was before you enter the map there is a button on the toolbar that says edit. Clicking that enables you to edit those certain features. For the summary I just put the beginning and ending dates of the battle, July 1, 1916 - November 18, 1916. After that I inserted a summary of the significace of the battle and what my map will be showing you.

 

 

 

 

 

After I completed this I continued by adding descriptions to each individual feature. 

 

Feature Descriptions

The Hawthorn Crater was the explosion that was caught on film and is used in almost every WWI film. The Lochnagar Crater was the single largest mine explosion in all of WWI and is now a memorial. The front line of July first when the mines were exploded and the British charged into no-man's-land, only to be slaughtered by German machine guns. The front line of July 14th where a series of artillery bombardments help the British to gain more ground. The front line of September 15th which was gain through the use of tanks by the British. The front line of November 18th which was the final day of the battle. And finally the arrows that show the direction of movement for the front lines and the British pushed back the Germans at the Somme.

 

 

An example of the description editor

 

 

So after I added all of the descriptions you can then exit the editor mode and when you click on a certain feature the name and description of that feature will be shown.

 

 

 



 An example of when you click on a feature and the title and description that appear near the selected feature

 

 

 

Additional Sources

 

I found another site that talks about the end of the war in casualties. The site states ,"The final tally included 420,000 British casualties, 200,000 French and the Germans 500,000. The reward for this effort was the six-mile movement of the British front line into German territory." I really like this quote because it does give you hard numbers on the amount of men that were lost by each side in a matter of five months or so. But then, almost sarcastically, it calls the six-mile movement of the front lines a "reward". This shows you why so many felt this war was a waste of resources with the amount of casualties compared to the amount of land gained by the Allies.

 

 

Road Blocks

 

This is something I had brought up last week, but I would really like to be able to put my map into a template to make it more viewer friendly. The only problem I have had with this is the legend on the ArcGIS Online site seems to be un-editable. While I could very well work around this it would mean that I would have to describe what each feature represents, when a legened could do that for me. I had tried putting my map into several templates and I do believe I have found one that I am fond of. This template would allow the viewer to see the map, read a description of the battle, and view the legend to know what each feature represents. Now with my lack of being able to edit the legend you can see why this would be considered a road block for me. Hopefully I can get that figured out becuase I think that template would accent my map very well.

 

 

This is what my map would look like in this template, as you can see the legend is not up to par

 

 

 

Hopefully I can figure out the legend, add a more in-depth description of the battle, and produce a map that is not only pleasing to those who wish to become more knowledgable, but also visually pleasing to the random viewer.



 

 

Goals

 

For next week I hope to get a solid start on my picture story map of the Battle of the Somme. Now that I have a majority of the sources I will use for this project at my disposal I believe this will come along quite smoothly. Also I hope to figure out the legend on my ArcGIS Online map and compete that project as well.

 

 

 



Week 5

Tasks

• Explain my decision to not use the CSV.
• Describe how I created the front lines map on the ArcGIS Online site and give a little bit of a historical background behind each movement.
• Talk about where I go from here and my next project I will be working on.

 

 

CSV Decision

So last week I talked about my difficulties with the CSV template and how I was unable to figure out the thumbnail template. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to not use the CSV template. Even though while working with story maps the CSV can be very useful in the long-run, for my project I do not think I will be working long enough to see the benefits of the CSV. I believe it would bring me more difficulties than it would benefits, and that is why I am choosing not to use a CSV for my final project story map.

Using Arc GIS for Front lines map

Last class period I made the decision to continue with my idea of making a map of the front lines through out the battle of the somme. The idea being there will be a map where you can turn on and off layers that specify certain days. Each day will have a different front line and information on the events leading up to the shift in the lines. To start this project their needed to be a basemap for which the front lines could be drawn. I located the correct area of the Battle of the Somme through my knowledge from visiting the sites and from various maps.

The Battle of the Somme occured north of the Somme River as to try to divert attention from the German troops in Verdun. The hope of the Allies was that the Battle of the Somme could be used to flank the Germans and catch them off gaurd. The French were getting hammered at Verdun, and the Somme was more of an act of despiration than anything.

                                                                                                                             

After the Allies chose this area to begin their attack they needed a plan. The British believed that they could plant a series of explosives underneath the German lines without them knowing. On the morning of July first the British planned to blow-up their explosives and with the Germans so caught off guard, be able to walk to the German front lines. The explosives were a major failure and the British were slaughtered in the tens of thousands.... on the first day. The British has approximatly 58,000 casualties on the first day alone.

Using the various maps of the front lines from the Battle of the Somme (see below for various maps), I drew a line of the front lines where they were located on the morning of July 1st. I did this by clicking add, add map notes. There is then an option to draw a free-hand line. This is how I was able to draw the front line on the map of the Somme.

 

July 1st

 

                                                                                                                               

 

The British then made another small gain on July 14, 1916. This movement in the front lines was made through a series of artillery bombardments. And that would be the story of this battle, a battle of many small, insignificant gains. For this reason there were many that believed this battle had been unnecessary. Their opinions were based on the fact that an enormous amount of lives were lost with minimal military gains.

 

 

July 14th

 

 

 

As you can see for this line I used a dashed line. This will give the viewer a better visual on the movement of the front lines. This was done by clicking on the edit button located on the toolbar. Once in that mode the user can click on any feature that was previously created and a tab will pop up with a number of different options for editing. You can then click on the change symbol button to change things such as color and line type.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                             

 







The next gain in the front lines was on September 15th. This gain was brought most significantly by the use of tanks for the first time in this battle. I illustrated this by using an even tinier dashed line to, once again, show the progression of the Allies as they moved East.

 

September 15th

                                                                                                                   


The final front line I drew was at the end of the Battle of the Somme in November 18, 1916. General Haig called an end to the fighting on this day. After thousands of casualties and minimal gains this battle was seem by many as a waste of resources. Was the loss of all these soldiers worth the diversion of attention to keep Verdun in the hands of the French worth it? I guess that is for you to decide.

 

November 18th

 

 

 

I once again used an even smaller dashed line for this date. For this line I also used pins to help me locate where the line was supposed to be placed. I placed these pins on the map on major cities that the front lines either passed through or came near to. After I was finished drawing the front line I would delete the pins to make the map look neat and professional. After finishing the front lines on the map I decided to insert arrows to show which way the lines were moving. The lines go from solid to dashed to try to show the direction of movement, but I believe the arrows are a better visual representation. I also inserted a symbol to show where the explosions of the Lochnagar and Hawthorn craters were located on the first day. While there were many more explosions than just at these two locations I am focusing on these becuase these are sites that we visited while we took our trip to France. Focusing on these two sites is awesome for me because we visited those sites in person and now I can look at a map and see the exact location and the significance that they had on the battle.

 

 

 

A picture of our visit to the Lochnagar Crater

Various front line maps: Front Lines 1; Front Lines 2; Front Lines 3

 

Unfinished frontlines map: Battle of the Somme

 

 

 

Story Map

 

I am currently in the process of gaining information for this project. I want to make a picture story map of key events and figures that played a large role in the Battle of the Somme. While I don't have a start on this project to display I do have an assortment of links and a few books that have been/ will be very useful to me while gaining information. Two books I have rented from the McIntyre Library are The 1916 Battle of the Somme: A Reappraisal by Peter H. Liddle and The Somme: the day-by-day account: by Chris McCarthy.

 

This will be the project I will start to work on for this next week, along with fine tuning and finishing up my interactive map of the front lines. I have yet to add the descriptions to the points and lines on the map. I'm also sure there will be other things I think of to add to my front lines map so I wouldn't consider it finished by any means. Once I finish both the front lines map and the picture story map I will have a full historical summary of the events that happened at the Somme from the beginning to the end of the battle.

 

 

By clicking on the edit tab on the toolbar you can then click on any feature and add a description to that line, point, or area

 

 

 

One idea I had focusing on the front lines map was I want to be able to edit the legend. Once I am able to edit the legend I would be able to insert my front lines map into a template to make it look more professional. Hopefully I can do a little bit of searching and figure that out by next week.

 

 

 



 

 





Week 4

Gettysburg Story Map



With my idea being to take the template used in the Gettysburg Story Map to create my story map of the Battle of the Somme I began to look at the ArcGIS Online story map site. All story maps created with using the Create Map button. This will bring you to a blank map where the user begins their project. After picking an appropriate base map I zoomed to the area in France north of the Somme river where the Battle of the Somme took place. Now you have the ability to add layers which I would need to get an interactive story map like the Gettysburg Story Map to work. But, obviously, with there being no pre-made layers on the ArcGIS site for the Battle of the Somme they would need to be created.

Another option that is available would be to draw on the map. To do this you click the Add button and then click the Add Map Notes button. This will bring you to a screen that gives you the ability to name the Map Note. After you name it you hit complete and the Edit: Add Features bar will appear to the right of the map. You can then draw on the map. I thought this map be an option to draw the several frontline changes throughout the battle by using this and then setting a date to each Map Note. The idea would be to add this to a Story Map template and the seperate Map Notes (with their predetermined dates) would be displayed. I was unable to figure out how to assign dates to the Map Notes. After playing around with this for a while I made the decision to go simpler with my Story Map and use the picture story map template. While this template won't be as sophisticated as I would have hoped for my final project in this class it will still get the job done and enable me to turn in a quality story map.

Creating a CSV

 

 



After changing my mind on the sort of template I will be using for my final project I decided to start to create a CSV to host my pictures. This will become beneficial once the process of starting the story map takes place. When you go to add pictures into a story map, instead of uploading all of the pictures and placing them in the correct position, you can simply upload your CSV file and all of the photos will be put into place for you.

A CSV is an Excel file that contains information about a photo, like; name, description, icon color, longitude, latitude, picture url, and thumbnail url.

 

 

For the name and description those are up to the user. The icron color our CSV used was red. To find the lattitude and longitude of the photos I had to go to other people's photos that had GPS enabled. My iPhone should have had the coordinated connected to each photo, but this was only true for about a fourth of the photos. Possibly just a lack of GPS signal. For the picture url we used the url; https://gis.uwec.edu/Geog368Fall13/(yourusername)/photoname. For example my user name is johnblak and a name of one of my photos was LochnagerCrater, so the picture url would have been; https://gis.uwec.edu/Geog368Fall13/johnblak/LochnagerCrater. The user name locates the picture by the album that I had created and then uses the specific picture name to find the exact photo.

A problem I encountered was with producing the Thumbnail URL. I tried using a thumbnail url generator that was located online, but it wouldn't work. I would past my JPG photo and press generate. An error would occur saying that only PNG and JPG were supported with this generator. Since I was using a JPG photo I'm not exactly sure what the problem is.

This is the error message that would appear when I attemped to obtain the thumbnail url

 



Site used for thumbnail url: Thumbnail Generator

Final Project Progress

With my CSV not yet being completed due to some technical difficulties I have continued brainstorming information for my final project and how it will be completed. I am going to use the ArcGIS site and use a picture story map template for my final project.

 

 

On the right is a map with specific points on the map, on the left will be a title, picture, and a description of the events that happened at that certain place. With a focus on the Battle of the Somme, most of the events will be located around the Albert, France area.

 

 

So far, my points of emphasis for this project will be the significance of Joffre and Haig in the battle and how their decisions benefited and worked against the allies. The significace of the dates July 1, July 14, September 15, and November 17, 1916 with the movements of the frontlines throughout this battle. And key events such as the start of the battle, lochnager crater, hawthorn crater, the massacre, and the end of the battle. One site I found, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWsomme.htm, focuses on all of these points and I also hope to find more sites and possible some books that go more in depth. I have not had the chance to look at any of the books that I had stated in my previous posts that I would, but I hope to dig into those sometime later this week.

 

 

 

Lochnagar Crater Site

 

 

 

Hawthorn Crater Site

 

 

I believe if I go in depth in the topics that I have chosen the viewer will have a much better understanding of the Battle of the Somme, the significance it had during WWI, and the geographical implications it had on Northern France.