Final Project Proposal

For our final project, I will create a virtual tour of the annual Bluebell Festival at Merrimac Farm for Prince William Conservation Alliance. The current web page for Prince William Conservation Alliance features photo collections and lists of the flora and fauna found at Merrimac Farm, as well as other Northern Virginia wildlife. There is a very simple trail map of the farm; it consists of aerial imagery with simple drawn trail lines.  Overall, the organization is lacking an online presentation of the bluebell festival. The actual festival is held on April 13, 2014.

The festival features ten separate tours of Merrimac Farm, each lasts approximately 90 minutes and covers approximately one mile. The tours are staggered to begin every 30 minutes, from 10:30 am to 3: 30 pm. Due to the timing; I will only be able to go on about three or four of the tours. Below are the tours.

Time	Tour Leader	Focus
10:30am	Larry Meade Northern Virginia Bird Club	Things that fly -- Birds, butterflies and dragonflies
11:00pm	Ernie Sears PWCA	Visit some of the best places for photos with camera and guide
11:30am	Julie Flanagan PWC Arborist	Trees and forest ecosystems
12:00pm	Charles Smith,Prince William Wildflower Society	Native plants - identification, interaction with wildlife and role in the floodplain environment
12:30am	Jeff Irwin & Bill Olson PWCA & Historic Prince William	History in the woods at theGreenlevel Cemetery
1:00pm	Harry Glasgow PWCA	Birding the Bluebell Trail
1:30pm	Judy Gallagher PWCA	Butterflies, bees & other pollinators that make wildflowers possible
2:00pm	Especially for Families	A hands-on, interactive exploration of habitats and wildlife.
2:30pm	Rachel Habig-Myers, Mosquito & Forest Pest Mgt.	Native trees, floodplain forests, and wildlife diversity
3:00pm	Kevin ParkerPWCA	Wildlife in the wetlands
3:30pm	Charlie Grymes	How Merrimac Farm was protected and opened for public use.

Source:  Prince William Conservation Alliance. http://www.pwconserve.org/merrimacfarm/bluebellfestival/index.html

While I’m on the tours, I will take significant amounts of photographs, videos, and notes.  The collected material will then be used as content for the virtual tour. The tour will be constructed in Flash, although it is likely that I’ll use Adobe Illustrator for details.  For the scope of this project, I will only create a presentation for one of the above tours. I will, however, add in additional tour data at a later time.  The image below shows the splash screen for the Prince William Forest Park virtual tour. My splash screen will either provide a selectable list/menu of each tour (or subject), or I might create an all-inclusive tour that encompasses everything. Either way, once the user selects a specific point on the base map, the tour will launch from that site. The base map will be a faux GIS style, featuring, at a minimum, aerial imagery and your standard Google-style street map. Ideally, there will be numerous photos for each spot, a brief video of the tour guide, and text. Additional photos can be obtained from the organization’s website. At the beginning of each segment, I’d like to use the VCAM on a photograph of the trail so that the user feels like they are actually entering the trail. The floodplain is supposed to be entirely filled with bluebells, so a 360 degree view would be great, but I’m not so sure about my video capabilities.

http://www.nps.gov/featurecontent/pwri/tour/index.htm

More inspiration:
http://www.naturevalleytrailview.com/#