A SPREADSHEET MAPPING APPROACH FOR ERROR CHECKING AND SHARING COLLECTION POINT DATA

The ready availability of online maps of plant and animal collection locations has drawn attention to the need for georeference accuracy. Many obvious georeference errors, for example, that map land animals over sea, the wrong hemisphere, or the wrong country, may be avoided if collectors and data providers could easily map their data points prior to publication. Various tools are available for quality control of georeference data, but many involve an investment of time to learn the software involved. This paper presents a method for the rapid map display of longitude and latitude data using the chart function in Microsoft Office Excel®, arguably the most ubiquitous spreadsheet software. Advantages of this method include: immediate visual feedback to assess data point accuracy; and results that can be easily shared with others. Methods for making custom Excel chart maps are given, and we provide free charts for the world and a selection of countries at http://www.vectormap.org/resources.htm.