North American Butterfly Association
Map a Count Center
Thank you for providing accurate latitudes and longitudes for the centers of the NABA Butterfly Counts. Historically the count centers have been reported in degrees and minutes and were typically estimated from paper maps. However, the widespread availability of online mapping programs and portable GPS receivers allows the easy acquisition of much more accurate information. Therefore, the NABA Count Program would like to now record coordinates as decimal degrees to 4 decimal places. That is, instead of reporting 39 degrees 35 minutes we will be using 39.5833 (39 + 35/60) degrees.
One of the most popular, online mapping programs is Google Maps which is available at maps.google.com. The town and state or province, approximate latitude and longitude in a variety of formats, or postal code, etc can be used to roughly orientate the map. (Please note that the longitude for all of North America is a negative number.) For finer definition, one can move the map with the mouse and zoom in/out.
To determine the latitude and longitude of a given point on the map, place the cursor over the point and right click (on a Mac, control click). From the menu that pops up select "What's here?". The latitude and longitude of the point will appear in decimal degrees when you roll your mouse over the green arrow. Please note the latitude and longitude also appear in the search box of Google Maps. These coordinates can be entered into the online count form when the count data is entered.
Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about this process.