Early Ontario Red Admiral Sighting

Michael Gochfeld gochfeld at eohsi.rutgers.edu
Fri Apr 21 09:14:23 EDT 2000


You (or I) learn new things every day. Making good maps is both an art 
and a science. I've never heard "range map" and "distribution map" used 
as distinct terms for these different approaches.  

Mapping occurrence on a spot basis is desirable and actually not 
difficult (although a spot may represent different things (from abundant 
regular resident to vagrant).  Many publications (particularly on 
butterflies) are based on county records, and if a butterfly has ever 
been recorded in a county the county gets a dot. Then along comes 
someone and connects (or shades the dots) creating a very illusory map. 
A county means very different things in different states. I've tried to 
encourage New Jerseyans to focus attention on meaningful geographic 
entities such as a park or a reserve, but there is still a tendency to 
think "county". 

Many of us thought that the availability of G.I.S. systems would make 
things better or easier, but of course the systems haven't yet 
influenced the way people collect the data.  So, after much frustration 
we decided NOT to include maps in our New Jersey book, and will await 
the long-delayed atlas effort. 

Mike Gochfeld



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