Publications

The Gap Analysis Project produces data and tools that help meet critical national challenges such as biodiversity conservation, renewable energy development, climate change adaptation, and infrastructure investment. The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is the official inventory of public parks and other protected open space. Consisting of more than 7 billion acres...

The Gap Analysis Project (GAP)/Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) National Terrestrial Ecosystems Data represents detailed data on the vegetation and land-use patterns of the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. This national dataset combines detailed land cover data generated by the GAP with LANDFIRE data (http://www.landfire.gov/)...

Major strategies in the wake of a large-scale disaster have focused on short-term emergency response solutions. Few consider medium-to-long-term restoration strategies that reconnect urban areas to the national supply chain networks (SCN) and their supporting infrastructure. To re-establish this connectivity, the relationships within the SCN must be defined and formulated as a model of a...

The U.S. Geological Survey Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS) was created in 2006 and since that time has provided research primarily in support of The National Map. The presentations and publications of the CEGIS researchers document the research accomplishments that include advances in electronic topographic map design, generalization, data integration, map

Initial visual assessments Wide range in the quality of fit between features in NHD and these new image sources. No statistical analysis has been performed to actually quantify accuracy Determining absolute accuracy is cost prohibitive (must collect independent, well defined test points) Quantitative analysis of relative positional error is feasible.

If conservation of biodiversity is the goal, then the protected areas network of the continental US may be one of our best conservation tools for safeguarding ecological systems (i.e., vegetation communities). We evaluated representation of ecological systems in the current protected areas network and found insufficient representation at three vegetation community levels within lower...

The ability to augment local gravity surveys with additional gravity stations from easily accessible national databases can greatly increase the areal coverage and spatial resolution of a survey. It is, however, necessary to integrate such data seamlessly with the local survey. One challenge to overcome in integrating data from national databases is that these data are typically of...

The U.S. Geological Survey's Larry Moore provides an update on the US Topo effort, the Survey’s general purpose, digital, quadrangle map series. He outlines the successes thus far and the obstacles still ahead in 2013.

Executive Summary Core Science Systems is a new mission of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that resulted from the 2007 Science Strategy, “Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges: U.S. Geological Survey Science in the Decade 2007–2017.” This report describes the Core Science Systems vision and outlines a strategy to facilitate integrated characterization and understanding of the complex Earth...

Topographic data are designed and widely used for base maps of diverse applications, yet the power of these information sources largely relies on the interpretive skills of map readers and relational database expert users once the data are in map or geographic information system (GIS) form. Advances in geospatial semantic technology offer data model alternatives for explicating concepts...

The Digital Mapping Techniques '10 (DMT'10) workshop was attended by 110 technical experts from 40 agencies, universities, and private companies, including representatives from 19 State geological surveys (see Appendix A). This workshop, hosted by the California Geological Survey, May 16-19, 2010, in Sacramento, California, was similar in nature to the previous 13 meetings (see Appendix...

Elevation data are essential for hazards mitigation, conservation, infrastructure development, national security, and many other applications. Under the leadership of the U.S. Geological Survey and the member States of the National Digital Elevation Program (NDEP), Federal agencies, State agencies, and others work together to acquire high-quality elevation data for the United States and...