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More Accurate Image Locations

We want the locations that we enter for images to be as accurate and consistent as possible for data reporting purposes. A short term goal for the data will be to generate range maps, but long term the data may be valuable for sharing with researchers. The sooner we get this right the easier things will be going forward.

As a step in that direction I have made some changes to the image submission form. Instead of entering everything in the location field, there are separate places to specify the state/province and the county. To ease the pain of having to specify this information separately, I've made it possible to specify defaults via your account page. If like most of us your images are usually from the same general area, this should save us all a bit of time on each image submission.

For the existing images everything is still in the original location field. Don't worry about changing the old images. I will take care of that.
Contributed by Troy Bartlett on 20 March, 2005 - 12:42pm

Another Excellent Improvement
Troy, this another example of your excellent software skills going to make BugGuide a better place. Not only have you improved the collecting of new location data, you have gone back retroactively and converted the old data. That undoubtedly took considerable work, since (for example) West Virginia might have been entered in the past as WV, W.V., or West Virginia.

It's exciting that the data we've been collecting will be even more useful with these uniform state and province labels. And it makes the new map improvements possible.

--Stephen

Stephen Cresswell
Buckhannon, WV
www.stephencresswell.com
… Stephen Cresswell, 3 April, 2005 - 1:01pm

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