Internet Catches Updated Butterfly and Moth Website

Why should we care about butterflies and moths? Thanks to butterflies, bees, birds, and other animal pollinators, the world’s flowering plants are able to reproduce and bear fruit. That very basic capability is at the root of many of the foods we eat. And, not least, pollination adds to the beauty we see around us.

Yet today, there is evidence of alarming pollinator population declines worldwide. Fortunately, science investigators of this crucial issue can use data collected and organized in the Butterflies and Moths of North America (BAMONA) database to monitor the health of our butterfly and moth population.

Backed by more than 287,000 verified sighting records and 3,239 images that describe 4,638 species, BAMONA is committed to collecting and providing access to quality-controlled data about butterflies and moths of North America. Dedicated volunteer coordinators, including national and internationally recognized Lepidoptera experts, verify each record. The goal is to fill the needs of scientists and nature observers by bringing verified occurrence and life history data into one accessible location.

To serve its broad range of users even better, BAMONA recently launched its re-tooled website. The site was developed at Montana State University (MSU) under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Network.

BAMONA’s latest innovations are aimed at improving technologies for both data collection and data dissemination. Users can now submit records – which typically include a photograph – via the site’s new user submission form, replacing an outdated submission process that required multiple e-mails with spreadsheet attachments. As for data dissemination, verified records are now immediately available on the site’s home page. New, interactive Google-based maps enable the display of any verified sighting, including Canadian locations. Visitors can now zoom in or out and click on dots pin-pointing sighting locations on interactive maps, and see the details of each sighting record. All these features were not available previously.

For more information, go to www.butterfliesandmoths.org.

USGS Newsroom

More information

Parameter	Value	Description
Magnitude	mb	The magnitude for the event.
Longitude	° East	Decimal degrees longitude. Negative values for western longitudes.
Latitude	° North	Decimal degrees latitude. Negative values for southern latitudes.
Depth	km	Depth of the event in kilometers.
Place		Textual description of named geographic region near to the event. This may be a city name, or a Flinn-Engdahl Region name.
Time	1970-01-01 00:00:00	Time when the event occurred. UTC/GMT
Updated	1970-01-01 00:00:00	Time when the event was most recently updated. UTC/GMT
Timezone offset		Timezone offset from UTC in minutes at the event epicenter.
Felt		The total number of felt reports
CDI		The maximum reported intensity for the event.
MMI		The maximum estimated instrumental intensity for the event.
Alert Level		The alert level from the PAGER earthquake impact scale. Green, Yellow, Orange or Red.
Review Status		Indicates whether the event has been reviewed by a human.
Tsunami		This flag is set to "1" for large events in oceanic regions and "0" otherwise. The existence or value of this flag does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist.
SIG		A number describing how significant the event is. Larger numbers indicate a more significant event.
Network		The ID of a data contributor. Identifies the network considered to be the preferred source of information for this event.
Sources		A comma-separated list of network contributors.
Number of Stations Used		The total number of Number of seismic stations which reported P- and S-arrival times for this earthquake.
Horizontal Distance		Horizontal distance from the epicenter to the nearest station (in degrees).
Root Mean Square	sec	The root-mean-square (RMS) travel time residual, in sec, using all weights.
Azimuthal Gap		The largest azimuthal gap between azimuthally adjacent stations (in degrees).
Magnitude Type		The method or algorithm used to calculate the preferred magnitude for the event.
Event Type		Type of seismic event.
Event ID		Id of event.
Event Code		An identifying code assigned by, and unique from, the corresponding source for the event.
Event IDS		A comma-separated list of event ids that are associated to an event.

Parameter

Value

Description

Magnitude

The magnitude for the event.

Longitude

° East

Decimal degrees longitude. Negative values for western longitudes.

Latitude

° North

Decimal degrees latitude. Negative values for southern latitudes.

Depth

Depth of the event in kilometers.

Place

Textual description of named geographic region near to the event. This may be a city name, or a Flinn-Engdahl Region name.

Time

1970-01-01 00:00:00

Time when the event occurred. UTC/GMT

Updated

1970-01-01 00:00:00

Time when the event was most recently updated. UTC/GMT

Timezone offset

Timezone offset from UTC in minutes at the event epicenter.

Felt

The total number of felt reports

CDI

The maximum reported intensity for the event.

MMI

The maximum estimated instrumental intensity for the event.

Alert Level

The alert level from the PAGER earthquake impact scale. Green, Yellow, Orange or Red.

Review Status

Indicates whether the event has been reviewed by a human.

Tsunami

This flag is set to "1" for large events in oceanic regions and "0" otherwise. The existence or value of this flag does not indicate if a tsunami actually did or will exist.

SIG

A number describing how significant the event is. Larger numbers indicate a more significant event.

Network

The ID of a data contributor. Identifies the network considered to be the preferred source of information for this event.

Sources

A comma-separated list of network contributors.

Number of Stations Used

The total number of Number of seismic stations which reported P- and S-arrival times for this earthquake.

Horizontal Distance

Horizontal distance from the epicenter to the nearest station (in degrees).

Root Mean Square

sec

The root-mean-square (RMS) travel time residual, in sec, using all weights.

Azimuthal Gap

The largest azimuthal gap between azimuthally adjacent stations (in degrees).

Magnitude Type

The method or algorithm used to calculate the preferred magnitude for the event.

Event Type

Type of seismic event.

Event ID

Id of event.

Event Code

An identifying code assigned by, and unique from, the corresponding source for the event.

Event IDS

A comma-separated list of event ids that are associated to an event.

Earthquakes today

Current and latest world earthquakes breaking news, activity and articles today

Internet Catches Updated Butterfly and Moth Website

More information

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Follow us!

Tsunami videos

Categories

Information