Coordinates and Projections Geography 121 Project-1 Coordinates and Projections Sarah Helble Laura McGough Megan Meiklejohn Section 8, Monday 2:30

What Will We Be Doing? Creating a map projection of our home towns Create maps Finding Coordinates UTM Coordinates State Plane Coordinates Identify distortions and preservations on the map Go to Angel. Open Lessons for GEOG 121. Go to Projects. Scroll down and select Project 1. Follow along with the project template as we present it.

Example: Your Name

Finding the Coordinates of your home Suggested Source: Google Earth.  http://earth.google.com/index.html ~Type in your home town and state in the locator bar *Google Earth will zoom in to your town ~Move your mouse cursor off to the left hand side of the screen and Google Earth should display the coordinates on the bottom of the screen. Note the coordinates to your town on a scrap piece of paper, make sure you include all three forms: degree, minutes, seconds; decimal degrees; and UTM coordinates. To do this, go to Tools and click “Options…” Under the 3D View tab choose the appropriate option in the Show Lat/Long section. Click Apply Settings and view coordinates at the bottom of screen.

Making your map Go to http://projections.mgis.psu.edu Choose map projection. Adjust the projection center and bounding coordinates as desired. Enter home town coordinates in decimal degrees and town name to plot location of town on map. Copy and save map. On Frontpage or Word insert map. Above the map heading should be the class, project number and name, and your name. Below the map…

Following Along with the Template... *Identify the map projection you selected. *Specify the geographic coordinates of the projection center or the bounding coordinates if you chose to map only a portion of the globe. *State which geometric properties of the globe (i.e., sizes, shapes, distances, and directions) are preserved, and which are distorted. This will depend on the type of projection you chose. Refer to class notes and text to identify the distortions related to your map projection. *Specify the Web site or other software you used to create the map projection. (i.e., http://projections.mgis.psu.edu) *Write a few sentences relating what you learned in the process of creating the map.

Coordinates Next record your coordinates as shown in the project template: Geographic Coordinates The place name shown on the map above represents the location of my home town. The geographic coordinates of my home town are: Latitude: __° __' __" N, Longitude: ___° __' __" W UTM Coordinates The UTM coordinates (NAD83) of my home town are: Easting: __________ meters, Northing: __________ meters, Zone: __________ State Plane Coordinates The State Plane coordinates (NAD83) of my home town are: To find the State Plane Coordinates…

State Plane Coordinates can be found at: National Geodetic Survey (2002) SPC Utilities http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/spc.html If you did not get the UTM Coordinates from Google Earth, they can be found at National Geodetic Survey (2002) UTM Utilities http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/utm.html To use the websites, scroll down to Interactive Conversions. Select Latitude/Longitude -> SPC or UTM depending on the site. Enter the Latitude and Longitude in the degrees, minutes, seconds format. Make sure you at least put a decimal point after the numbers, and if Longitude is under 100° put a 0 in front of the number. Example: Latitude: 40°07’50.98” N Longitude: 75°08’08.11” W should be entered as Latitude: N400750.98 Longitude: W0750808.11

Almost Finished... After each set of coordinates, describe the coordinate system in your own words. For the UTM coordinate system explain what NAD83 means and how it differs from NAD27 Then compare and contrast the three coordinate systems in your own words. Finally be sure to list your sources and the websites which you used.

And lastly, save all of this to Frontpage and upload onto your website. If you need to find any of these websites and/or sample projects, go to Missy’s website (www.personal.psu.edu/myr100) or visit our personal pages for the powerpoint: www.personal.psu.edu/sjh5036/ www.personal.psu.edu/mmm5000/ www.personal.psu.edu/lmm5023 The End.