Global Gazetteer - Utility for plant collectors

Global Gazetteer  --  Worldwide Directory of Cities and Towns 
http://www.calle.com/world/

This is a directory of 2880532 of the world's cities and towns, sorted by
country and linked to a map for each town. This is data presentation
demonstration only. No liability whatsoever is assumed.


Presentation Copyright 1998-2000 by Falling Rain Genomics, Inc. 

Anyone interested in collecting plants might find this Internet utility
useful.  There are some caveats, however.  

1.      You can choose towns by countries, but not by political subdivisions
like states or provinces.  This means that downloading certain town lists
like Sa (including San Xxx) will take time.  You will find lots of similar
names like San Antonio, fewer with names like Galeana and Los Lirios to
choose from.  The categories are further broken down by Latitude and
Longitude in one degree steps.  This will be sufficieint to find most
locations, providing you have an atlas.

Besides the name and latitude and longitude, altitudes are given in both
feet and meters for each data base entry.

2.      You can right click on the image and save it to file, but you will
have to save it under a different name -- all files download as map.cgi.
The format is in GIF, so rename each file as map01.gif and index forward.

3.      The maps (especially the "illuminated" ones) give a lot of
topographic detail.  Valleys and slopes are clearly indicated.  However, all
topo details like rivers and roads are absent (You are probably going to
have to pay big bucks for these enabling details for a subscription in the
future).  The selected town is in dead center, indicated with a red dot and
red text.  Hopefully, the full version will allow the additional features in
the future, and also the ability to zoom in at least 2x and 4x in the
future.  The current zooms don't seem to add any more intelligence or
resolution.

The nice feature is that you can still find the maps useful if you
triangulate an area with two or three maps, then draw in your own details
You should be able to find an explorable site unequivocably, providing there
is enough geographic variation in the area.

Two maps that I can send separately are for Los Lirios, Coahuila (near Jame)
and Galeana, Nuevo Leon.  The maps show the Eleven Sisters
syncline/anticline folded mountain ridges clearly.  Details are sufficient
to find obvious major gulleys, peaks, ridges, and valleys with a resolution
of a few miles.  I also did two locations in Argentina, Salto and El Carril
in the provence of Salto.  These were collecting areas for the Argentina
trip that Tony Avent and the Yucca-Do people, amongst others went to.

Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, North Carolina  27406 USA
336-674-3105
World of Salvias:  http://www.eclectasy.com/gallery_of_salvias/index.htm
Salvia email list:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Salvia
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