[Nhcoll-l] Google Earth fix?

Thu Jan 6 15:48:25 EST 2022

Another really useful overlay once you open the little + sign, is historic USGS topo. maps.  This has been very helpful in georeferencing older collections, particularly those collected along old railways that are long gone.  They also often show the locations of "Schools" that are referred to in locality data.

Elana Benamy (she/her/hers)
Curatorial Assistant, Botany Department
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
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[cid:a99e910d-c07b-4b15-a74e-ae738260144b]

________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Mare Nazaire <mnazaire at calbg.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 3:43 PM
To: Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com>
Cc: NHCOLL-new <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Google Earth fix?

External.

As I understand it, GeoLocate does have a measuring tool to measure road miles. I never just use one georeferencing program - I use GeoLocate and Google Earth together and make sure that I am getting consistent results, because you can run into discrepancies, as you have pointed out.

~Mare

On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 11:43 AM Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com<mailto:dyanega at gmail.com>> wrote:
On 1/6/22 11:03 AM, Marie Angel wrote:
Hi,

In Geolocate’s collaborative georeferencing web client (https://www.geo-locate.org/web/WebComGeoref.aspx<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.geo-locate.org%2Fweb%2FWebComGeoref.aspx&data=04%7C01%7Ceb468%40drexel.edu%7C825b585024884c92e7f808d9d155888c%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C1%7C637770987590165245%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=rb8wUuFzBzeXkKGi7U97ob9t8kkprg6KN6baINg1P8I%3D&reserved=0>), if you click on the small blue and white plus sign on the right side, it will show different base layers and overlays. Under “overlays” there is an option to show US counties.

I hope this helps!

Hi, Marie.

Now that you point out where this feature is, it's good to see that they have it. However, what would help here is if GeoLocate had a more user-friendly interface. I can't see how you and other using GL can deal with specimen label data capture without introducing unnecessary uncertainty.

Consider this specimen label:

17 mi W Carrizozo, Lincoln Co., NM

Unless I'm missing something, GeoLocate does not have a tool to create a path that measures exactly 17 road miles W of Carrizozo. Google Earth does. It turns out, in fact, using Google Earth with the county lines layer restored, that this locality label is wrong, because if you drive 17 miles west from Carrizozo (there's only one road, and it goes mostly NW), you cross the county line into Socorro county at around 13 miles. I don't see a way to tell in GL how far that county line is from Carrizozo, the way you can using Google Earth.

When I was researching georeferencing protocols for legacy specimens (anything without lat/long data on the label) for a major NSF grant, I did numerous side-by-side comparisons of various available tools, and while GeoLocate gave very rapid answers, it always underperformed in terms of accuracy, with a much higher error rate and uncertainty radius compared to manual lookups using Google Earth. Points generated using GL would often be several miles away from the actual location, so what one saved in time (admittedly substantial) was undermined by a very significant loss of accuracy. I can give very concrete examples, for anyone interested in nitpicky details.

Thanks,

--
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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--
Mare Nazaire, Ph.D.
Administrative Curator, Herbarium [RSA-POM]
California Botanic Garden
Research Assistant Professor, Claremont Graduate University
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