GPS for Dummies.pdf - Engineering Surveyor

Chapter 11Finding Places and CoordinatesIn This Chapter Using online gazetteers Converting coordinatesWhen you start using a GPS receiver, you’ll soon discover that it’s prettynumbers-oriented. There’s time, speed, distance, altitude, and (ofcourse) the location coordinates. But quite often you’ll want names to gowith those numbers. Or you might need to convert those coordinate numbersinto another format. That’s where this chapter comes in. Read here todiscover how to locate places by their names and get their coordinates (andother information) and how to easily convert coordinates from one coordinatesystem to another.Finding Your Way with Online GazetteersSometimes you need a little bit more information about a location. You know a place name, but you don’t know exactly where the place islocated. You’ve heard about a place but don’t know whether it’s a mountain peak,a river, or a town. You generally know where a place is, but you need the exact latitude andlongitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates.In these cases, you can turn to a gazetteer, which is a collection of placenames with such useful data as geographic coordinates, elevation, and featuretype. Gazetteers are usually published as books, but digital versions areavailable. The U.S. government has two free online gazetteer services: GNIS provides information about places in the United States. GNS has information about locations all over the world.