Mapping Tool

[Kim F. Navin]

Jan-Peter,
We have developed a PC based mapping tool (BioMap) in the course of building
the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institutes (STRI) recently released
'Shorefishes of the Tropical Eastern Pacific' CD. It allows you to generate
base maps, enter distribution data, plot lat/long point and range
distributions (and polygons in the near future) for species, call up lists
of species from localities as well as a host of other stuff. It is
essentially a mini GIS which was designed to get over the astronomical cost
of commercial GIS. Having said that it can export data for use in Arc Info
(shape files) as well as export and import from excel spreadsheet. 

We are currently cleaning it up for standalone release (as a freebie) from
the BioBase web site (www.biobase.org). The first release should be ready in
a couple of months and we will be continuing to develop the system over the
next couple of years.

Regards

Kim F. Navin
BioBase Coordinator and STRI Research Associate
kim at biobase.org
www.biobase.org - '..endless forms most beautiful'

-----Original Message-----
From: Jan-Peter Frahm [mailto:frahm at UNI-BONN.DE] 
Sent: Thursday, 8 May 2003 1:19 AM
To: TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG
Subject: [TAXACOM] Mapping Tool

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