QGIS: Free Dots on Maps

This is a quick rough and ready tutorial aimed at giving a recorder with little or no GIS experience a simple method for creating a basic species distribution map in QGIS like this one:

 © Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2011

Blurring and plotting OS Grid References

This is a post about a quick and easy method for turning a list of GB Ordnance Survey grid references into "eastings & northings", so you can plot them on a map. If you want, just skip the details and download my Excel Conversion Utility spreadsheet that can:

• convert your grid references into Eastings and Northings
• tell you the distance of all your records from another grid reference (i.e. a site centroid)
• dumb down your grid reference to 1km, 2km, 10km or 100km resolution.

Making a county base map

Cumbria Relief Map

Since starting work at CBDC I have found one of the most useful layers is a simple raster layer - a relief map of the county giving some of the main geographic features that is useful for putting underneath species distribution maps.

Common Hawker from Virtual Fauna of Lakeland