How to create polygons in Google Earth

1. Open google earth, create a new folder to put your polygons in, and click on 'Add Polygon' icon at the top.

2. The polygon attribute box will come up, but ignore it for the moment and click and hold the left mouse button down on the map to start drawing the polygon.  The hand icon should have changed to a square  It will create a polygon automatically so no need to join the last vertex with the first.

Further information on drawing polygons at:

http://earth.google.com/intl/en//userguide/v4/ug_drawing.html

3. When you have finished drawing your polygon, type in the name and description in the polygon attribute box.

Name the polygon the species name, and put a numeric or alphanumeric id code in the description box.  Use this ID to link up to a spreadsheet into which you fill the species attributes.

The template of the spreadsheet to use can be found here: Species attributes Spreadsheet Template.xls

To avoid confusion with the attribute ID, the temporary ID just used to link up the polygon with the attributes should be listed under Mapping_ID.

4. To save your polygons to a KMZ (or KML) file, right click on the folder name in the left hand side, and save as KMZ.  Save as KMZ for email