USGS e-topos coming in next few weeks
February 26, 2009 by Rich Owings
Electronic topo quads will be available from the USGS map store in the next few weeks (apparently for free), according to All Points Blog. The goal is to produce new topo maps for the entire U.S., with each quad being updated every three years!
The updates are based upon the National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP), which I’ve covered before. The APB article goes into the merits (demerits?) of this, since it is summertime, “leaf-on” imagery. I’m not sold on the GeoPDF format yet either, but hey, at least USGS is making steps towards a faster update cycle.
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GeoPDF seems like a huge step backwards – there are thousands of programs that can handle TIFF and GeoTIFF imagery automatically. GeoPDF locks up the underlying imagery – even a PDF extractor produces garbage when you try to extract the base USGS imagery from a GeoPDF.
It seems that the new geopdfs will have layers you can turn on or off, which in my book is a huge plus (if most GIS/GPS apps get a way to view them). I certainly hope the collars can be “turned off”.
http://www.publicpress.org/10149
PDF format is tough to deal with. Maybe the info will be more productive than we think PDF can produce.
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The lack of a GeoTiff option, as well as the lack of Mac/Linux support for GeoPDF, are both issues. As soon as the first new GeoPDFs are out, though, I plan to have a hack out that will let you convert them into GeoTiffs. Won’t be too complicated, but will take a few extra steps. Look for it on my Free Geography Tools blog.
And I suspect that cleverer programmers than I should soon have converters available that will do the same thing, except better.
Looking forward to seeing your converter.