Georeferencing in GEOLocate CoGe

How to use this course
The purpose of this course is to provide a modular learning resource for georeferencing in the GEOLocate Collaborative Georeferencing client.  Each module consists of learning objectives and a training video. The training refers to the protocol linked below:
NOTE (2025): Because of a deprecated plugin, quizzes are no longer available.
This georeferencing course consists of three modules: Module 1, Module 4, and Module 5. There is no module 2 or 3 because they describe how to use CCH2 for georeferencing, which is different than GEOLocate CoGe.

Module 1: What is georeferencing?

Learning objectives
Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
  • Understand the basic practice of georeferencing and why it is important
  • Define the terms: occurrence, locality, uncertainty/error, geodetic datum
  • Identify different types of coordinate systems you may encounter when georeferencing U.S. specimen records, including decimal degrees; degrees, minutes, seconds; UTMs; and township, range, section.

Module 4: The point-radius method for georeferencing
​​Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
  • Use GeoLocate to assign latitude and longitude coordinates to a textual locality description using the standard point-radius protocol
  • Assign a reasonable error radius to a georeferenced point using the standard point-radius protocol
  • Evaluate whether a specimen's location is too imprecise to accurately georeference
  • Document any assumptions or estimations made when georeferencing in the Georeference Remarks field

Module 5: Georeferencing in GEOLocate CoGe

Learning objectives
​Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
  • Create an access an account in the GEOLocate Collaborative Georeferencing client
  • Place points, adjust error radii, measure distances, create error polygons, and change the base map layer in GEOLocate CoGe​
  • Add georeferencing comments to a specimen that you georeferenced or were not able to georeference
  • Use the History tab to import coordinates from a previously georeferenced specimen into your workbench