Specimens, subspecies, and GPS

[Ryan Walters]

I have a Garmin also and in colorado it is very accurate to several meters. I e\recently traveled to texas and LA and had all soe\rts of trouble getting good
altitude readings. Part of the troublr seems to be the lack of enough sattilite signal in certain regions. 10 miles easr of Shreveport was a problem.  Also the instruments are dumbed down a bit.  The military GPS are terribly accurate but they don't let civies have that kind of power. But like we all agree, it will grow as a technology. I would love a transponder to put into my one dog that gets happy feet.  I don't
know much about the altitude as use. I do collect the front range of Colorado where I can go fron 5000' to 14,000' if I am so inclined. Species change with the height. Plus it is only five letters on a lable.

Michael Gochfeld wrote:

> I think that the use of GPS will become much more widespread in the next few years.   Who knows, we may all end up with implantable tracers so that Big Brother will know where everyone of us is at any time.  You can even see why this might be a useful attachment to errant children.  New GPS techniques allow location down to less than one meter, which is far more than anyone needs for butterfly studies or labels.
>
> However, I can't yet confirm that altitude is useful.  At least at sea level my $275 Garmin is very poor at altitude.  It knows the difference between 0 and 1000', but cannot match even a cheap altimeter.
>
> That may be a fault of my instrument or location or elevation.
>  M. Gochfeld