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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