EPA 40km Hexagons for Conterminous United States

This dataset of 40 square kilometer hexagons was created by the U.S. EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) and is being released by the U.S. Geological Survey for public use. The 40 sq km hexagons were derived from a grid consisting of a triangular array of points that cover the United States and neighboring Canada and Mexico. The base grid of points had a companion areal structure called a tessellation. The base tessellation hexagons constituted this tessellation. In other words, surrounding each grid point was a hexagon that defines the area within which all points are closer to this grid point than to any other, and the set of hexagons defined this way completely and  mutually exclusively covers the space of the grid. The grid had a base density of approximately 648 sq km per point with a spacing of approximately 27 km between points. The 40 sq km hexagons (which do not form a tessellation) were centered about the randomized grid points and are exactly 1/16th the size of the tessellation hexagons (and therefore slightly less than 40 sq km). Hexagon boundaries are distributed in geodetic coordinates based on the Clarke 1866 model of the  earth, meaning that the coordinates are latitude and longitude on the ellipsoid used by most North American geodetic coordinate systems. Distribution can also be made in GRS 80 coordinates if desired. The precision of the coordinates is to millionths of a degree, i.e., to 6 decimal places of a degree. This corresponds to about 0.1 meter on the surface of the earth. The point grid was constructed in the plane of a special version of the Lambert azimuthal equal area projection; for subsequent use they may be projected using other map projections. When other projections are used, the geometry of the point grid will not be perfectly triangular nor will the hexagons surrounding the points be perfect, since sizes and/or shapes and/or distances will necessarily be distorted in another projection relative to the one used to construct the grid.