Updated US Topo maps for Kentucky from the USGS

New US Topo maps for Kentucky are now available in the USGS Store for free download. One of the main improvements is the inclusion of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) road data.

Other important additions to the new US Topo maps for Texas and Oklahoma are the integration of wetlands layers using data from theU.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Wetlands Inventory, along with the continued incorporation of “crowdsourced” trail data from theInternational Mountain Bike Association.

The US Topo map improvement program has entered its third, three-year cycle of revising and updating digital US Topo quadrangles. These new US Topo maps replace the second edition US Topo maps and are available for no-cost file download from The National Map, the USGS Map Locator & Downloader website , and several other USGS applications.

The USGS recently released US Topo maps for Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma which were the first set of states to feature TIGER data. The TIGER database contains all geographic features — such as roads (more than 6.3 million miles), railroads, rivers, and legal and statistical geographic boundaries — needed to support the Census Bureau’s data collection and dissemination programs.

To compare change over time, scans of legacy USGS topo maps, some dating back to the late 1800s, can be downloaded from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.

For more information on US Topo maps: http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/.