Verifying your datum if you have latitude and longitude - 5/29/2006

If you have collected your locations with a GPS unit, you may refer to the unit to see what datum the unit collects it them. If you no longer have access to the unit, you can verify your latitude and longitude from the Kentucky Hunting and Fishing mapping web site at http://kygeonet.ky.gov/kdfwr/viewer.htm A definition of datum can be obtained from http://fw.ky.gov/kfwis/scicol/reference_datums.htm

Near the top of the screen of that web site, on the toolbar are 2 buttons that will allow you to zoom to your location and get the quad and county name.

First click on the Zoom to Lat/long tool. This tool allows you to type in a Latitude and Longitude in several different coordinate systems and then zooms to that location on the map and places a dot on the map. Start by selecting the “North American Datum 1983. Clicking the tool button will bring up a screen and you should enter your latitude and longitude. If you are entering in decimal degrees, there is no need to enter more than 6 digits to the right of the decimal place. For example I have a site near the KDFWR headquarters I would enter as follows

After you have zoomed to the location you should recognize on the map the location as where you saw the animal to be reported. If the point exactly matches, then the datum NAD 83, should be used in the scientific collection data entry. If the point appears to be hundreds of feet off, then try the zoom tool again, selecting NAD 27.

The fish and wildlife web site has additional capabilities for zooming into an area. Web site http://kygeonet.ky.gov/imshelp/ has complete help for the site.