CALIFORNIA PHENOLOGY
  • Home
  • About
    • People >
      • Faculty & Staff
    • Phenological Research
    • Progress
    • Project Description
    • Project Plan
    • Related Projects
  • Get Involved!
    • 100 Club
    • CCH Meetings
    • Volunteers
  • Resources
    • Data Portal Tutorials >
      • CCH2 Survey Q&A
    • Digitization FAQ / Help page
    • Document Library
    • Equipment Recommendations
    • Expert Identification
    • Funding Opportunities
    • Georeferencing >
      • Georeferencing in CCH2 Training Course
      • Georeferencing in CoGe Training Course
      • Georeferencing Protocols and Guides
      • Georeferencing Webinar
    • Phenological Scoring
    • Sensitive Taxa in CCH2
    • Workflow & Protocols
    • Webinars
  • Research
    • Presentations and Posters
    • Papers and Publications
  • Education
    • Educational Materials
    • Phenology Research Course
    • Media & News
    • Meetings & Upcoming Talks
  • Blog
  • Data Portal

Georeferencing in CCH2 Training Course

How to use this course
The purpose of this course is to provide a modular learning resource for georeferencing in the herbarium data portal, CCH2. 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.
Download Protocol

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 2: Accessing specimens to georeference in CCH2

Learning objectives
Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
  • Use the data editor tools in CCH2 to search for specimens meeting specific search parameters, e.g., lacking georeferenced coordinates
  • Determine whether a specimen should be georeferenced

Module 3: Shortcuts for georeferencing in CCH2

Learning objectives
​Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:
  • Use CCH2 tools to enter coordinate data from the specimen label into appropriate fields and convert alternate coordinate systems into decimal degrees, when possible
  • Use the Dupes? button to import georeferenced coordinates from duplicate specimens, when they exist
  • Use the Coordinate Cloning Tool to import georeferenced coordinates from specimens with similar localities, when appropriate
  • Critically evaluate coordinates provided by the Dupes? and Coordinate Cloning tools to ensure quality georeference data were imported - completion of module 4 is essential to complete this learning objective​

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
Picture
This project made possible by National Science Foundation Award 1802312.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


Poppy images courtesy of Matt Ritter

Contact Us