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Sites and locations

This section covers the spatial structure of your environmental data: the physical places where data is collected and the points and features within them. If you run or use Erde to track field and lab data, this is where you build the framework everything else hangs from.

A Site is the top-level container — a physical place under management. Inside a Site you create Locations, the sampling and monitoring points where work actually happens. A Location can carry subsurface field artifacts: a Well, a Borehole, a Test Pit, or a Sediment Core. Samples, Water Levels, and other records all attach beneath this structure.

In this section​

  • Sites — what a Site is and the fields it holds: code and name, type, status, land use, address, coordinates, boundaries, and the site areas that subdivide it.
  • Manage sites — create, edit, lock, and delete a Site, and control who can reach its data through Site users and contacts.
  • Locations and field artifacts — what a Location is and the four subsurface features it can carry (Well, Borehole, Test Pit, Sediment Core), including their status values.
  • Add locations and artifacts — create a Location under a Site and add field artifacts to it.
  • Track site registrations — record a Site's regulatory program enrollments and their identifiers and dates.
  • Manage location coordinates — add a Location's surveyed positions and set its primary spatial and elevation values.
  • Manage location aliases — give a Location alternate regulatory, historical, or external-system identifiers.
  • Edit site and area boundaries — set or clear the polygon boundary of a Site or Site Area.
  • How coordinates are mapped — how Erde reprojects stored coordinates to WGS84 for the map, what transforms exactly, and the NAD27 datum-shift caveat.
New to this section?

Start with Sites to learn the top-level concept, then read Locations and field artifacts. The two task guides — Manage sites and Add locations and artifacts — show you how to do the work once the concepts are clear. For how Sites fit alongside Projects, see Sites and Projects.