[Nhcoll-l] Google Earth fix?

[Cassidy, Kelly Michela]

Ha ha, that’s the type of location description that makes me want to throw random (virtual) darts at a map, because it would probably be as accurate as the description. I don’t think you have a GeoLocate or Google Earth problem; you have a collector who was probably either guessing how many road miles he’d traveled or guessing at which county he was in.  All you can do is decide whether you want to put the point 17 miles out in a different county or put it in the right county, but less than 17 miles down the road. Either way, the “Uncertainty” field gets a big number.

Dr. Kelly M. Cassidy, Curator, Conner Museum
School of Biological Sciences
Box 644236
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-4236
509-335-3515

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega
Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 11:41 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Google Earth fix?

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://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.geo-locate.org/web/WebComGeoref.aspx__;!!JmPEgBY0HMszNaDT!7oFTZSq2WE3QvKODeke7obuk2lf4LV1wui7fWhM8rS75wEb5uvLaN1yEFbxPWG4$>), 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)

             https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/faculty.ucr.edu/*heraty/yanega.html__;fg!!JmPEgBY0HMszNaDT!7oFTZSq2WE3QvKODeke7obuk2lf4LV1wui7fWhM8rS75wEb5uvLaN1yEwIGZmiw$>

  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness

        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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