The first should be the zero point, where x and y are 0 in your sampling grid. You’ll need to know the UTM coordinates of the four corner points in your sampling grid. This is actually a lot easier than it sounds – you’re just solving two equations that map X,Y data from your sampling grid to Easting and Northing coordinates in UTM. The next step is to create a 2D coordinate transform, between your sampling grid coordinates, and the UTM coordinate system. You could use California State Plane coordinates, but UTM is probably an easier choice, and you can set your GPS to display UTM coordinates. Latitude and longitude are great for plotting spherical data, but for any type of X,Y data, you should switch to a metric grid system. Since you’re using a sampling grid with 10 meter intervals, the first thing you should do is adopt a mapping coordinate system that uses meters as well – UTM. Can you recommend the best way to do that? I have GPS coordinates for each of the stakes and would like to translate the ‘fake’ coordinates of my grid into real lat and long coordinates. I have set up a 10 meter grid of stakes across a lek, which I use to get x and y coordinates for marked birds on the lek throughout the morning. I am doing a behavioral study on a species of bird that has communal display sites called leks.

Expert gps view google earth 3d