Grid Refs

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Bananafishbones
Posts: 325
Joined: Tue May 06, 2014 4:44 pm
Location: Poynton East Cheshire

Grid Refs

Post by Bananafishbones »

Grid Refs:

Steve Mc, or indeed anyone else. (I HAVE POSTED THIS SAME REQUEST IN THE STICKY THREAD).

I am doing a mothing session for someone this evening and I wanted to get an exact Grid Ref. When I enter the details, in this instance it is Little Hulton area (Trafford Drive) the road is covered by about 4 squares, can I pin point the exact square? House No is 33.

Cheers,
Dave

P.S.: As this is not in Cheshire will anyone be interested in the result if I published it tomorrow? I have no idea if the garden is rural or not but will be good for me to maybe see a few new species.


[NB edited by RachelMC to include link to the Sticky Thread]
Garden mothing with a big un (125MV skinner)
SteveMcBill
Posts: 809
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:15 am
Location: Runcorn, Cheshire
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Re: Grid Refs

Post by SteveMcBill »

Dave,

Firstly - go into RODIS - (rECOrd's online data entry facility) and use the Map - you can zoom in right to the house and then click on the point where you trap will be (if you are fully zoomed in you will get an accurate 8-figure Grid Ref). Personally, I always use an 8-figure grid ref generated in this fashion for a moth trap - firstly it is far more accurate than I can do from a paper may and secondly it shows the actual position of the trap down to a 10 metre square (probably not far off the attractive distance of the trap). For mapping data later an 8-figure reference can be plotted very accurately and can also be demoted to a 6 or 4 figure square - a 4 figure reference cannot be made MORE accurate as the detail is not there).

I will take a look now - is this in Greater Manchester ??

Cheers.

Steve

SteveMcBill
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Location: Runcorn, Cheshire
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Re: Grid Refs

Post by SteveMcBill »

I am not actually sure which house is number 33 Dave and the map is not as high in detail as most areas around Manchester - however, if I am correct about the house number then the Grid Ref is (or close to): SD 72900 04224 (that is in the back-garden - about 1/2 way down the length of the garden).

Hope that helps.

Cheers.

Steve
SteveMcBill
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Location: Runcorn, Cheshire
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Re: Grid Refs

Post by SteveMcBill »

Dave,

Greater Manchester also has a Local Biodiversity Records Centre (just like rECOrd for Cheshire) - this can be found over at: http://www.gmwildlife.org.uk/

They too use RODIS for online record entry by Greater Manchester recorders and would be very interested in receiving records from your moth trapping session in Trafford Drive.

Cheers,

Steve

Bananafishbones
Posts: 325
Joined: Tue May 06, 2014 4:44 pm
Location: Poynton East Cheshire

Re: Grid Refs

Post by Bananafishbones »

Steve,

A big thank you on both these bits of info. A great help for when I am logging the results. I will of course pass those results onto Greater Manchester recorders.

Dave

Garden mothing with a big un (125MV skinner)
stevehind
Posts: 2908
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:44 am
Location: Higher Poynton, Cheshire

Re: Grid Refs

Post by stevehind »

As a County Recorder, I would prefer to receive your records directly, rather than via the Local Record Centre, so would suggest wherever you are mothing in the country always pass your records onto the relevant County Recorder, whose details can be found at: http://www.mothscount.org/uploads/CMR_L ... 7_2014.pdf

Which in your case would be:

VC59 South Lancashire
Macro-moths
Richard Walker, Red House, 87 Duke Street, Formby, Liverpool, L37 4AR
Email: rbkvwalker@talktalk.net

The County Recorder can then contact you directly if they have any queries. Your records are then added to the county moth database and sent to Butterfly Conservation for the National Moth Recording Scheme. The County Recorders usually have a relationship with their Local Record Centre, whereby the records are also deposited.

Also be careful using very detailed grid references, as some software packages cannot cope with 10 figure grid references.

Regards,
Steve

SteveH
Posts: 2072
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:50 am
Location: Elton, Cheshire

Re: Grid Refs

Post by SteveH »

..... climbing onto the soapbox .....

... and picking up on SteveHH's comment on unnecessary accuracy causing confusion or an inability for the record to be logged, the Mapmate database for County moths left me bewildered.

There are numerous tags for what is obviously the same place and numerous variations for what is obviously the same person. Such inconsistent capture of basic information makes it incredibly difficult for anyone to wanting to use the data due to not being able to find it all - worse than that, they won't know they haven't found it all .....

I gave up using Mapmate.

Cheers,
Steve

PaulMartinHill
Posts: 158
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:50 am

Re: Grid Refs

Post by PaulMartinHill »

Quite agree with you Steve H, try recording on a large site and keeping tab of the place names (like at Marbury and Witton!!). However, at some point with the moth records we'll have it cracked if the Grid Ref's are all correct - but that is another story!! At least Grid Refs stay the same and are subject to place name changes, so the records will always be in the same place.

At some point, once we've caught up with all the macro records, we'll do some form of Atlas for Cheshire, but it is quite a while off yet.

SteveH
Posts: 2072
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:50 am
Location: Elton, Cheshire

Re: Grid Refs, recording and Mapmate

Post by SteveH »

Hi Folks,

Just to be clear on my opinion of Mapmate, lest anyone opt not to use it as a consequence ......

Personally I find it clumsy to use and as I said earlier in this thread, once the data is within it, its not straightforward to get it out again. The whole point of having digitalised information is to be able to use it and that is certainly not easy.

The plus side of course is that its cheap when compared with other recording packages, and its the weapon of choice for recording Cheshire moths which means (amongst other things) that you can acquire the entire Cheshire records database should you so wish. In terms of submission of records, what it also guarantees is standardisation of species names for everyone submitting data and that's something County recorders find extremely helpful; it's also easier to receive information digitally rather than through hand-written notes, so I strongly urge that pathway for everyone on this forum.

Again, personally, I am happy to export my records from my system and to post-process them into a Mapmate-compatible format for Steve HH ...... Mapmate users are the only ones who can avoid this step.

Cheers,
Steve

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