Thursday, July 30, 2009

Finding Your Way with Online Gazetteers


Sometimes you need a little bit more information about a location. _ You know a place name, but you don’t know exactly where the place is located.
_ 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 and longitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates. In these cases, you can turn to a gazetteer, which is a collection of place names with such useful data as geographic coordinates, elevation, and feature type. Gazetteers are usually published as books, but digital versions are available. 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.

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