This course was originally developed by Katie Pearson for the California Consortium of Herbaria (CCH) and the California Phenology Thematic Collections Network (CAP TCN), funded by the National Science Foundation.
The course has been modified (with permission) and adapted accordingly to suit the needs and purposes of the TORCH TCN. It provides a modular learning resource for georeferencing in the GeoLocate Collaborative Georeferencing Web Client (GeoLocate CoGe), each module consisting of learning objectives and a training video.
The TORCH TCN Introductory Slides and Georeferencing Protocol are available for download as a companion document to the course:
This georeferencing course consists of three modules: Module 1, Module 4, and Module 5. NOTE: Modules 2 and 3 are not included, because they describe how to conduct georeferencing from within Symbiota portals, which are different from GEOLocate CoGe.
Module 1: What is georeferencing?
Learning objectives
Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
- Understand the basic practice of georeferencing and why it is important
- Define the terms: occurrence, locality, uncertainty/error, geodetic datum
- Identify different types of coordinate systems you may encounter when georeferencing U.S. specimen records, including decimal degrees; degrees, minutes, seconds; UTMs; and township, range, section.
Module 4: The point-radius method for georeferencing
Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
- Use GeoLocate to assign latitude and longitude coordinates to a textual locality description using the standard point-radius protocol
- Assign a reasonable error radius to a georeferenced point using the standard point-radius protocol
- Evaluate whether a specimen’s location is too imprecise to accurately georeference
- Document any assumptions or estimations made when georeferencing in the Georeference Remarks field
Module 5: Georeferencing in GEOLocate CoGe
Learning objectives
Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
- Create an access an account in the GEOLocate Collaborative Georeferencing client
- Place points, adjust error radii, measure distances, create error polygons, and change the base map layer in GEOLocate CoGe
- Add georeferencing comments to a specimen that you georeferenced or were not able to georeference
- Use the History tab to import coordinates from a previously georeferenced specimen into your workbench
Two other documents which you will find useful to complement your training are:
The Georeferencing Quick Reference Guide (2012) by Wieczorek et al., and
the GBIF Georeferencing Quick Reference Guide by Zermoglio et al.
When you are done watching the videos and reviewing the TORCH Introductory Slides and Georeferencing Protocol, please get back in touch with your local Trainer to receive additional instructions.
You will also probably want to SIGN UP on the Collaborative Georeferencing Portal, in case you haven’t done so already.