Forest Visitor Maps Developed with PAD-US

July 16, 2019

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) manages huge areas of landscapes in our National Forest System. To support the mapping for these areas, particularly for visitor support, USGS manages FSTopo, their data and map production system.

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FSTopo takes advantage of PAD-US as an authoritative, single source of data for land ownership and management outside of USFS-managed lands. It leverages work that USGS has put into aggregating and vertically integrating the different agency data sources in PAD-US, creating a cleaner, more seamless coverage. FSTopo doesn’t directly consume PAD-US data, it is used in support for identifying land ownership outside of national forests, especially on the Secondary Base Series maps used to create Forest Visitor Maps. FSTopo-created maps and Forest Visitor Maps are primarily developed to support recreation.

PAD-US helps FSTopo do its job in less time to create its products, by significantly reducing data aggregation efforts.