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The problem with Nevada is that you can find desert plants and mountain plants in the same close area of imagery.



To imagine local vegetation we must take into account the altitude.

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Guys, Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong here?
What's the difference between these two sets of coordinates?
38.23244,-118.552438 decimal form, and
38�23'2.44"N 118�55'24.38"W geo format.
They place me 30 miles apart from each other in GE.
And the decimal format does not get me any images from Kens or GE web sites. I get Images not available for that location.
What the hell am I doing wrong?

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The first coordinates are in decimal, and the second are in DMS (degrees, minutes, seconds)
There are 60 minutes in a degree, 60 seconds in a minute, so for a simple example decimal 38.50 equals 38� 30' in DMS

In your example above, decimal 38.23244 would be 38 degrees and ( .23244 x 60) minutes, or 38� 13' 57'' in DMS

Edit: To use Ken's utility, you may want to configure GE to also display coordinates in decimal format.
See Tools - Options - 3D View - and click on the "Decimal Degrees" radio button under "Show Lat/Long"

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Thanks again Zach, and all others. I may have stumbled (in my half sleep) across a minor glitch in this GE SAR development we're doing for future use. VS and MTurk use DMS coordinates, but Ken uses decimal degree coords to retrieve the Sanborn2 images. Again this sets up a duplication or a potential point of confusion. In order to get a new assignment of San2 we use decimal coords, but to report anything on VS we need to switch to DMS. That should be standardized on one or the other. I suggest DMS since that is the most common way to report geo coordinates.
Just another thought.

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Guys, Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong here?
What's the difference between these two sets of coordinates?
38.23244,-118.552438 decimal form, and
38�23'2.44"N 118�55'24.38"W geo format.
They place me 30 miles apart from each other in GE.
And the decimal format does not get me any images from Kens or GE web sites. I get Images not available for that location.
What the hell am I doing wrong?

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The first coordinates are in decimal, and the second are in DMS (degrees, minutes, seconds)
There are 60 minutes in a degree, 60 seconds in a minute, so for a simple example decimal 38.50 equals 38� 30' in DMS

In your example above, decimal 38.23244 would be 38 degrees and ( .23244 x 60) minutes, or 38� 13' 57'' in DMS

Edit: To use Ken's utility, you may want to configure GE to also display coordinates in decimal format.
See Tools - Options - 3D View - and click on the "Decimal Degrees" radio button under "Show Lat/Long"

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Thanks again Zach, and all others. I may have stumbled (in my half sleep) across a minor glitch in this GE SAR development we're doing for future use. VS and MTurk use DMS coordinates, but Ken uses decimal degree coords to retrieve the Sanborn2 images. Again this sets up a duplication or a potential point of confusion. In order to get a new assignment of San2 we use decimal coords, but to report anything on VS we need to switch to DMS. That should be standardized on one or the other. I suggest DMS since that is the most common way to report geo coordinates.
Just another thought.

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The reason I use decimal coordinates instead of DMS is purely technical. All calculations have to be done in decimal coordinates in order to figure out how to line up imagery. Also, Google Earth wants the coordinates in decimal format within the KML files themselves. This means that even if I were to accept DMS coordinates, I would have to then convert them to decimal before my script could use them. If I were to then return coordinates in DMS, I would then have to convert the resulting coordinates back into DMS from decimal degrees. This creates a whole mess of tedious calculations that would have to be done and create some knarly string parsing issues (just look at the fact that Google Earth's fly to box chokes on DMS coordinates that contain the decimal symbol).

Another factor in my decision to use decimal degrees is that Violent Skies provides decimal coordinates (as did MTurk) to look up overlays. I've actually been very preplexed as to why VS decided to require DMS coordinates for submitting findings when decimal was being used everywhere else.

In short, working with decimal degrees is just so much easier and cleaner to deal with from a technical standpoint. From a user standpoint, it really doesn't matter, so long as it is consistent. The problem is that Violent Skies is using both in that they require DMS for submitting reports but use decimal degrees when providing coordinates to reported objects. It would be nice if the guys at Violent Skies would allow sightings to be submitted in decimal degrees since I'm sure they are converting them over to this anyways.

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Ken, if you would at least allow DMS user input on your KML utility page, you could simply convert the DMS entry to Decimal and keep everything the way it is now for calculations and outputs. This would be helpful when working with both VS and your page at the same time. Basically you would only need to add 3 entry boxes for latitude (latDeg, latMin, latSec) and 3 for longitude lonDeg, lonMin, lonSec) ,,,

So in case you change your mind and want to help us overworked, underpaid rif-raf... I don't know what programming language you use, but here it is in a very simple form:
.
Validate DMS limits on entry:
latDeg 0 to �90
latMin 0 to 60
latSec 0 to 60
lonDeg 0 to �180
lonMin 0 to 60
lonSec 0 to 60
.
Get signum of coordinates:
latSign = (latDeg > 0) - (latDeg < 0)
lonSign = (lonDeg > 0) - (lonDeg < 0)
.
Convert DMS to decimal degrees:
latDECIMAL = latSign * (abs(latDeg) + latMin/60 + latSec/3600)
lonDECIMAL = lonSign * (abs(lonDeg) + lonMin/60 + lonSec/3600)
.
Then you could simply use latDECIMAL and lonDECIMAL as before for your calculations and change nothing else... You don't even need any knarly string parsing. How about it?

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$coordinates = 38� 05'37.39"N, 118� 38'00.84"W
$coordinates = 38 05'37.39"N, 118 38'00.84"W
$coordinates = 38.0937194444,-118.633566667

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To answer your question about programming language, I'm using PHP. If someone wanted to provide me a PHP function that could accept coordinate data in either decimal or DMS in the following format I could review it and plug it into my code:
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$coordinates = 38� 05'37.39"N, 118� 38'00.84"W
$coordinates = 38 05'37.39"N, 118 38'00.84"W
$coordinates = 38.0937194444,-118.633566667

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Not only in the same general area but next to each other. The only thing I don't remember seeing on the flat is maybe pinion pine?
Of course the sage brush does tend to grow smaller on the sides of the mountain but it still grows there.

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What would you say about a small mixture of all this charming local vegetation, just to put everybody of the same opinion? (still a day or two and they will end up believing that one never saw a tree, by here )