Here is a neat little Google Earth Time Zones file that has often been helpful on many of my field trips when trying to remember where time zones start and stop. Just open the file in Google Earth, then point and click your location to get info on that time zone.
Often we are supplied with coordinates in decimal degrees but need to use Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds instead. Luckily, there are several solutions that you can use, here is a simple coordinate converter tool that I use.
Various user manuals that I refer to when working with Leica total stations (Some I created and others from Leica … ).
Using acronyms and abbreviations is commonly practiced in the Geomatics industry and most of the time people just assume that everybody else knows what every acronyms and abbreviation stands for. Well that is obviously not the case most of the time and over the years I have created myself a little digital cheat-sheet of geomatics acronyms and abbreviations that I use with my work in my writing.
These UTM key maps can easily help you find out what UTM zone you are working from. Simply click on the map to enlarge it to expose all of the map, then find out where you are located and look for the zone and row that matches your area.
Every now and then I come across some little utilities that help to make things easier while working in the field and these pages are mainly my way of sharing them with others while creating a go-to place where I can easily find them when I need them.
Here is a Google Earth file that that contains locations and basic information about all of the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) Continuously Operating Reference Stations CORS. Saving you time from searching for CORS stations in your area and finding out what sampling rate they record GPS data at.
GPS calendars are different then traditional calendars that most of us are used to working with, yet they are pretty common these days due to the increased use of GPS surveying. Yet there is never one around when you need one, so if you find your self doing a lot of GPS field work like myself then you may notice that you will working in Julian Days …
Geographic coordinate systems enable us to spatially locate features on the Earth using specified set of two dimensional numbers. The coordinates of each feature represent the horizontal position (and sometimes vertical position when elevation is available) of it and one of the most commonly used coordinates is Geographic with values of latitude, longitude. However many different coordinate systems can be used to map the same area depending on various factors such as map extent, scale, end user etc. Therefore we often find in Geomatics that we can have data from different coordinate systems that we need to use together spatially in one reference system.
I am sure that most of us have run into times when we have features that have defined coordinates of one system that we need to use with a different one. (E.g. your map is in UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) but you have been given GPS points in Lat/Long).
If you ever find yourself in need of quickly getting values converted from Geographic to UTM / MTM (Modified Traverse Mercator) or UTM / MTM to Geographic then here is a free online geographic coordinate convertor tool that I often use provided by Canadian Spatial Reference System