Global Positioning Systems (GPS) is a common way to collect location data for agricultural, urban, and natural resources. It is made up of a constellation of 24 satellites used for civilian GPS, which accurately determine your location (X,Y,Z) in any weather, day or night, anywhere on Earth. There are several choices of GPS units, all of which differ in features and capability. Overall, GPS units are separated into three categories: recreation-grade, mapping-grade, and survey-grade. This guide is for recreational and basic mapping units only (with horizontal accuracies of approximately 2-30m). For more information about higher-grade mapping and survey-grade, please visit http://giif.cnr.berkeley.edu/gps.html.

There are several things you should consider when buying a GPS unit for your fieldwork and research:
Waypoint capacity
How many waypoints, or GPS points, will the unit need to hold for the duration of the field visit? Many Garmin units hold 1,000 waypoints, but some older models hold only 500. For most fieldwork, it is recommended to buy a unit with at least 1,000 waypoints.

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