The National Map Corps January 2026 Newsletter - Vol. 12 | Issue 1

With the growing proliferation of AI generated content and chat bots, it’s reasonable to wonder what role AI might play in researching and editing structures data for TNMCorps, or if it should play a role at all. Bottom line: it can be used to aid in research but should NEVER be used as a primary authoritative source!

We previously addressed the issue of recreation points in restricted areas that are not properly tagged as restricted, making them editable by volunteers (which they shouldn’t be). But what if you need to create a non-federal recreation feature that happens to fall within a restricted area?

Since we started collecting visitor centers, there’s been some justified confusion around the distinction between visitor centers and nature centers. Are they the same thing? Should nature centers be collected? How do you tell the difference? Let’s break it down!

A challenge you might encounter on occasion is deciding which symbol will most accurately represent a structure, especially if that structure has characteristics of more than one feature type. This often happens with schools since we have many different school categories, and sometimes they just don’t fit cleanly within those categories.

Awhile back, TNMCorps volunteer DevOpp reached out to pitch the idea of a geography quiz for our newsletter. While not specifically structures-related, we agreed that it would be a fun way for the TNMCorps community to test their general knowledge of US geography!