North American Butterfly Association
Map A Count Circle
One of the useful things that you can do using Google Maps is to display the 15 mile diameter count circle. First generate the circle by going to the KML Circle Generator and entering the latitude and longitude of the count circle in decimal degrees generated by following the instructions at Map Count Center. Next enter a radius of 12070 meters (which is 7.5 miles). Then click the "Go" button. This will return a link that you can follow to save a *.kml file to your local computer that you can input into Google Maps.
To read a *.kml file into Google Maps, you must first log into your Google account. If you don't have a Google account, you can get one for free by logging onto Google Maps and clicking on the link "Sign In" in the upper right hand corner. Then click on the link "Create an account now" in the bottom right hand corner.
Once you are logged in, click on the link "My Maps" on the left side of the screen and then click on the link "Create new map". Next click on the link "Import" and navigate to the downloaded *.kml file on your computer and click on the "Upload" button. Please note that you also might want to plot nearby count circles to insure that there is no overlap with your circle. You can find out the count centers for neighboring counts by going to the NABA Butterfly Counts Regions page and clicking on the appropriate region and then the appropriate count.
When in Edit mode for one of your maps in Google Maps, you can also add markers and lines to the map as well as edit the color and thickness of your circle. Any map that you create can be emailed by clicking on the Send link in the upper right hand corner and the map can be printed by clicking on Print link that is next to the Send link.
Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.