Need Data of Migrations for GIS Study

[Iowa Tom]

I have a real need of monarch sightings and tag/recovery data that includes decimal coordinates and dates. I found some useful information here http://www.learner.org/jnorth/spring200 ... orted.html but it would be nice to have more up to date info. Can someone help me to find data like this that includes a coordinate for each entry?

What I am doing is a graduate research study that I want to use in a 10th grade biology classroom this fall. It will employ a free GIS program that I downloaded here: http://www.mapwindow.org/download.php?show_details=1 . My goal is to integrate GIS technology into the biology curriculum. We already tag monarchs every fall.

So far I’ve only found one source of data that allows me to input directly into the GIS program without making any changes. It’s a migration map at this site: http://www.learner.org/jnorth/gis/monarchfall99.html .

Thanks in advance for any help!

Tom (grades 8 - 12 science teacher, everything but physics )

[sbowman]

Iowa Tom
I did something similar during the spring semester in my GIS undergrad class at UH-CL. I used the GIS data from Journey North as you did and also waystation information from Monarch Watch and joined it to zip code files. (I was using ArcGIS software) I did it only for the state of Texas and am currently working on the entire US as part of a larger project. Unfortunately I had to enter the waystation information manually into my own shapefile. Good luck. I'll hopefully be finishing up my big project this fall (summer has had too many interruptions for me to get much further on the project).
Sherry

[Iowa Tom]

Hey Sherry,

Somebody else helped me out by writing a program that would convert excel files into a shape file. Would that help in your situation?

Tom

[sbowman]

Thanks for the offer, but I'm already too deep into data entry to take advantage of it. I have the instructions to convert excel files to use in a shape file, but at the time I started on the project I was also learning the ArcGIS software, so I tended to do things the long way. It has also allowed me to make entries more consistent as far as capitalization and abbreviations on names of waystations.
Sherry