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Nightjar Survey Home

United States Nightjar Survey Network

Creating Digital Maps of Nightjar Survey Routes in Google Maps

Using Google Maps to create routes and stops has some downfalls; survey routes and stops will sometimes appear 1500 ft NNE of where they are actually drawn. You may view the true position of your route our stop by positioning the cursor where you placed the line. Small white squares will appear at your line vertices. However, the actual position of your drawn route or stop will appear geographically correct when viewed in Google Earth or in programs we use for data analysis

To begin:

Go to http://maps.google.com/ and click on the "My Maps (New!)" tab on the left panel. Click the grey "Create a new map" button. Enter your google account email and password or create a free account. In the left panel, give your map a name and description. Select "public" or "unlisted" (either is ok). In the future, public maps will be included in the search results on Google Maps and Earth. Unlisted maps will not be included in search results. Clicking and dragging on the vertical zoom bar to zoom and click and drag on the map to reposition.

To Map survey stops use the "Add a placemark" button located at the upper left corner of the mapview. Then click a position on the map where you would like to create your placemark. Enter a name and description for the stopping point (i.e., Point 1 for first stop, Point 2 for second stop, etc.). To edit placemark name and description later, simply click on the placemark and edit in dialog box. To delete placemark, click on placemark and click "Delete" on the dialog box.

To send digital map data to CCB, select "Email" in the upper right of the Google Maps window and copy the URL from the resulting popup window into an email to conbio@ccb.wm.edu

If you have Google Maps, you may select " KML" in the upper right of the Google Maps window and follow the above Google Earth directions under " To save a path as a file:"

If your are creating your own route please consider Mapping your route path.

To Map survey route use the "Draw a line" button located at the upper left corner of the mapview. Click on the map to create line vertices, and double-click to end the line. Once the line has been ended, a dialog box will pop up in which you can enter name and description of the path.

To later edit name and descriptions of points or paths, double-click on the name of the point or path on the left panel.

To send digital map data to CCB, select "Email" in the upper right of the Google Maps window and copy the URL from the resulting popup window into an email to conbio@ccb.wm.edu

If you have Google Maps, you may select " KML" in the upper right of the Google Maps window and follow the above Google Earth directions under " To save a path as a file:"