Title: Universal Transverse Mercator - GIS Wiki | The GIS Encyclopedia
Headings: Universal Transverse Mercator
Universal Transverse Mercator
Contents
History
Definitions
UTM zone
Overlapping grids
Advantages and Disadvantages
Latitude bands
Latitude bands
Notation
Exceptions
Locating a position using UTM coordinates
Simplified formulas
See also
External links
References
Notes

Content: For the remaining areas of the Earth, including Hawaii, the International Ellipsoid was used. Currently, the WGS84 ellipsoid is used as the underlying model of the Earth in the UTM coordinate system. Prior to the development of the Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system, several European nations demonstrated the utility of grid-based conformal maps by mapping their territory during the interwar period. Calculating the distance between two points on these maps could be performed more easily in the field (using the Pythagorean theorem) than was otherwise possible using the trigonometric formulas required under the graticule-based system of latitude and longitude. In the post-war years, these concepts were extended into the Universal Transverse Mercator / Universal Polar Stereographic (UTM/UPS) coordinate system, which is a global (or universal) system of grid-based maps. The Transverse Mercator projection is a variant of the Mercator projection, which was originally developed by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569. It is one of the most commonly used projections for rectifying remotely sensed data as well as for large-scale topographic mapping. This projection is conformal, so that it preserves angles and approximate shape but invariably distorts distance and area. UTM involves non-linear scaling in both Eastings and Northings to ensure the projected map of the ellipsoid is conformal. Definitions
UTM zone
Simplified view of US UTM zones.