Best projection for south-east Asia

[parvathyVenugopal]

Hi all,

I am struggling to choose a best projection for South east Asia's karst map. I wanted to calculate the Euclidean distance and I am not quiet sure about which projection I should use to preserve distance.

Look forward to hearing from you...Thanks in advance...

Parvathy

[DanPatterson_Retired]

How accurately do you need distances to be?

What is the areal extent being covered?

What projections are normally used for your area, particularly compromise projections?

Are you comparing distances relative to one another?

In short the answer to some or all of those questions will provide guidance

[parvathyVenugopal]

Hi Dan,

I am not quiet sure whether I can answer all your queries. Well, I am preparing layers to use them in MaxEnr for modelling. Normally people use Lambert Conformal Conic projections, I think. Yes, I would like to compare the distances because basically I would like to know how my species are distributed in relation to these carbonic rocky areas. The same I would like to find for waterways and roads in my study area.

Apologies if my answer is insufficient.

Thank you...

[DanPatterson_Retired · Accepted solution]

The Generate Near Table—Help | ArcGIS for Desktop could be used for calculating the distances, if the results from using a LCC projection weren't sufficiently accurate for your purposes.  An equidistant projection wouldn't apply to all locations either if memory serves.  So I would go with mapping using a projection that people are familiar with seeing and doing distance calculations using other means if the results from the LCC projected data weren't deemed to be accurate enough ... although I am sure they would be fine. We use LCC in Canada because of our large EW extent and when projected systems traverse several UTM zones...our normal fall-back

[parvathyVenugopal]

Thank you so much Dan...I will follow your suggestions ...