Something that you need to consider is how accurate/precise the Hardy, Something that you need to consider is how accurate/precise the data need to be for your needs. You mention specific coordinates. Except for weather stations, which can have many of their own issues and will not likely be located at your coordinates, obtaining precipitation and temperature for the Americas will require modeled data with spatial resolution and model accuracy that may not match your needs. The network of testing weather stations will also be very different across your region. Also, what are you really interested in, monthly averages, daily averages, hourly data, extreme ranges, etc.? There is a big interest in bioclimatic modeling right now and a lot of applications that don't fully consider these limitations of the data. Once you get your data how are you going to analyze it to determine trends and how are you going to interpret your results given the limitations of the data described above? Those are the questions you need to address before you even think about going after data. Even if this is a simple homework exercise in using GIS and species distributions your should at least touch on these topics.
John ________________________________ From: Iván González <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 12:02 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Geographic Precipitation and Temperature Data Hi Hardy. In R you can use the function 'extract' from R package. This function return a list of coordinates their respective layers values. You must give the coordinates and layers as argument. In ArcGIS you can use this function, I guess: http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.3/index.cfm?TopicName=extract_values _to_points Sincerely, Iván González Garzón -- Ecologist Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá, Colombia [email protected] -----Mensaje original----- De: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] En nombre de Bastian Bentlage Enviado el: lunes, 17 de junio de 2013 12:47 p.m. Para: [email protected] Asunto: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Geographic Precipitation and Temperature Data Hi Hardy, Depending on the spatial resolution you need you could extract this information from Worldclim: http://www.worldclim.org/ This will require some general GIS skills in R, ESRI's ArcGIS or similar. Regards, Basti On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:35 PM, R. Hardy Hendren <[email protected] > wrote: > Hello, my name is Hardy Hendren. I am an undergraduate student at the > Virginia Military Institute, and I am studying Eastern Red Bats > (Lasiurus borealis). > > As part of my research, I am looking for a way to find temperature and > precipitation data for specific geographic coordinates. These > coordinates are located across the United States, Central America, and South America. > > If anyone knows of an effecient way to obtain temperature and > precipitation data for specific geographic coordinates, I would > appreciate your response. > > Thank You, > R. Hardy Hendren > Virginia Military Institute > -- Bastian Bentlage, Ph.D. Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics The University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA
