Mapping Tool

[Jan-Peter Frahm]

Hundreds of amateur botanists and also zoologists in Europe are "mapping" species records, however, the facilities to display these records on maps are poor, at least to my knowledge. It would be, however, nice to display these records on the computer, for publications as well to get an impression of the known distribution. GIS programs are expensive and difficult to operate. There are also possibilities to publish such maps on the internet (Open GIS). There are also many Map Viewers, which can - again to my knowledge - only display maps which were prepared before with GIS programs. There are also some programms, which were developed for special purposes, but work only with special maps and special data, but are not an open system. Is there any mapping tool (a home edition), which can read lat-long data from a database and display the coordinates as dots on a map (similar to the map viewers displaying the herbarium records of some herbaria), and which can be provided for free or at a reasonable price?
Jan-Peter Frahm
Botanisches Institut der Universität
Meckenheimer Allee 170
53115 Bonn
Tel. 0228/732121
Fax: 0228/736542
www.bryologie.uni-bonn.de