Best projected coordinate system (meters) for Southeastern US

[BrittanyBankovich]

Any suggestions for the best projected coordinate system (in meters) for the Southeastern US, particularly the state of Florida (entire state), coastal Georgia, and coastal Alabama and Mississippi?

[MelitaKennedy]

There's nothing already defined. What will you be doing with the data? Any analyses? What kind? Display only? Etc.

Melita

[BrittanyBankovich]

Hi Melita,

We'll be creating a pairwise distance matrix of bird locations to look at geographic distance coupled with genetic distance for speciation purposes. I don't think extremely precise distances will be needed, so I've just put them in USA_Contiguous_Albers_Equal_Area_Conic_USGS_version for now. Was just curious to see if anything for the SE USA existed that might be a better fit for that region/yield more accurate measurements than Albers EAC. Thank you!

[BojanŠavrič]

You can also consider creating a custom version based on Projection Wizard tool. Just an idea.

[ShaneMiles]

Hi Brittany Bankovich‌, 

If you are going for an aesthetic appearance, depending on the size of the region you could look at creating a custom Lambert Conformal Conic by adjusting the Central meridian and the Standard Parallels.  See Lambert conformal conic—Help | Documentation  for background on the projection. You can also see the comments section of  How to choose standard parallels and central meridian for area of interest? for further information.

Shane 

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