Location How do you describe where you are?

Relative Location Explaining where something is in relation to something else

Use compass directions to describe location relative to something else

Relative Location The US is south of Canada Ohio is west of Pennsylvania Nebraska is northeast of Colorado

Absolute Location Explaining where something is using a coordinate system

Absolute Location Explaining where something is using a coordinate system

Address 1666 West 29th Street, Erie, PA

Latitude Longitude System geographyalltheway.com

Based on a Sexagesimal system first used by Sumerians Places the earth on a coordinate plane

geographyalltheway.com Latitude and Longitude lines are a grid map system. But instead of being straight lines on a flat surface, Latitude and Longitude lines encircle the Earth, either as horizontal circles or vertical half circles

latitude geographyworldonline.com

longitude

POSITIONING IN MGRS The Military Grid Reference Systems (MGRS) is an alpha-numeric system for expressing coordinates. A single alpha- numeric value references a position that is unique for the entire earth. Based on the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid system

Places the earth in the positive quadrant of a coordinate plane Based on a decimal system

15SWC

15SWC The first two characters represent the 6° wide UTM zone. ◦Leading zeros are included so that Zone 9 is “09”. ◦For polar areas outside the UTM area, these characters are omitted

15SWC The third character is a letter designating a band of latitude. ◦Beginning at 80°S and preceding northward, the 20 bands are lettered C through X, (omitting I and O) ◦The bands are all 8° high except band X, which is 12° high. ◦Outside the UTM are, A and B are used near the South Pole, Y and Z near the North Pole

15SWC The vertical UTM boundaries and horizontal latitude band boundaries form (generally) 6° X 8° Grid Zones. Hence, the first three characters of the MGRS value, e.g. “15S”, are referred to as the Grid Zone Designator (GZD)

15S

15SWC The fourth and fifth characters are a pair of letters identifying one of the 100,000-meter grid squares within the grid zone (or UPS area).

The remaining characters consist of the numeric Easting and Northing values within the 100,000-meter grid square

The first half refer to the Easting The second half refers to the Northing

MGRS coordinates may be rounded to reflect lesser refinement. For example: ◦15SWC is at 1-meter refinement. ◦15SWC is at 10-meter refinement. ◦15SWC is at 100-meter refinement. ◦15SWC8151 is at 1000-meter refinement. ◦15SWC85 is at 10,000-meter refinement.