georeferencing localities

[Julian Humphries]

At 10:15 AM 12/6/96 -0500, Robin Panza wrote:
>>According to our experience in CONABIO there is simply no substitute to
>>georeference specimens to the highest resolution possible, which
>>nowadays, using GPS may go down to thirty meters or even less. With that
>
>That's all very well and good for future collecting, but some of us maintain
>100-year-old collections.  There is no way to produce GPS reference data for
>the 200,000 bird specimens (and probably ca. 1,000,000 specimens in the other
>departments) already in our posession.

Well, thats not quite accurate.   For many, perhaps most of your specimens
it is possible to produce very good georeferenced specimen data.  It takes
work and cooperation, but it is doable.  In most collections there are far
few "localities" than specimens and many are easy to quickly georeference.
Online gazetteers and atlas' can make the process go pretty quickly.

Sure you can't do it all this year, but as a decade long project (or faster
with grant support), I imagine you could georeference much of your
collection (and heh, I bet Conabio has already done all of your Mexican birds!)






Julian Humphries
University of Kansas Natural History Museum
Phone: 913-864-3800
Fax:      913-864-5010

"Good enough isn't."