7- Creating a New Shapefile for Draft Burn Lines – Thamarrurr

We’ll use the New Shapefile Layer tool from the toolbar above the map to create a new layer for our Draft Burn Lines.  Skip to the video

In the window that appears, we need to give the new shapefile:

  1. A name and location (1),
  2. And make the geometry type a LineString rather than a point or polygon type (2).
  3. Then we need to add a couple of new fields to the attribute table (3, 4, 5). ->The first field to add is ‘Type’, which we’ll use to describe the type of burn that is planned. Type in the word ‘Type’ into the ‘Name’ field (3). ->Using the drop-down options; make sure the field type (4) is set to ‘abc Text (string)’. ->Add the field to the list by clicking on ‘Add Fields List’ (5).
  4. The second field will be ‘Timing’, which we’ll use to describe the timing of the burn. ->Add the name Timing to the new field ‘Name’ (3). ->Using the drop-down options make it a text field (4) rather than other options like integer etc. ->Then click ‘Add to Fields List’.
  5. We can now click OK at the bottom of the window to create the shapefile and add it to our map.

The new layer ‘Draft Burn Plan’ should now be in our layers list. Right click the layer and select ‘Open Attribute Table’. The attributes table will open and you can see that at the moment there are no features in that layer. That is because it a brand-new layer and we are yet to add features.

You can add new burn lines using the edit and add line features buttons.

Once you have pressed these buttons your curser symbol will change to a crosshair and you can draw a new line:

Left click to draw a line – right click to finish a line. When a line is finished you can add the type and timing of the burn:

Add a few lines and give them different types (e.g. Air, Ground, Roadside, etc.) and timings.

We can change the symbology of the Draft Burn Plan layer so that the different burn types look different on the map.

  1. Open the properties of the layer and go to the Symbology tab (1),
  2. change it to Categorised (2),
  3. change the categorisation value to Type (3)
  4. and click Classify (4),

The different burn type categories that you created are now listed (5) and you can change the way each category looks.

Once you have added all the draft burn lines and symbolised them you will have a basic draft burn plan map that can be exported and shared with colleagues or printed or used however you like. 

You can also export this map as a PDF that can be used in Avenza maps for a mobile device. This is covered in the next section.

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