This site provides free access to Iowa geographic map data, including aerial photography, orthophotos, elevation maps, and historical maps. The data is available through an on-line map viewer and through Web Map Service (WMS) connections for GIS. The site was developed by the Iowa State University Geographic Information Systems Support and Research Facility in cooperation with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This site was first launched in March 1999.

This topographic map is designed to be used as a basemap and a reference map. The map has been compiled by Esri and the ArcGIS user community from a variety of best available sources. The map is intended to support the ArcGIS Online basemap gallery. For more details on the map, please visit the World Hillshade and World Topographic Map.

Digital raster graphic (1:250,000-scale DRG) is a scanned image of a US Geological Survey (USGS) standard series topographic map. The image is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the Universal Transverse Mercator projection.

The Map of the Elevation of the Bedrock Surface in Iowa was compiled using all available data, principally information from GEOSAM, supplemented with well and boring information from the Iowa DOT, exposure reports from Iowa Geological & Water Survey reports and files, and the Department of Soil Conservation county soils maps for Iowa. The soils maps were especially valuable, since they identified soils that encountered bedrock within the soil horizon, and less dependably also spot-located rock exposures. A 50 foot contour interval was chosen for the map because it was considered to best represent the accuracy of the well data, allowed for fairly good representation of the bedrock surface in areas with limited well control, and was mappable in high relief areas (the contours packed so close together that it precluded mapping or forced the software to snap-join contours). The 50 foot contour interval also allowed areas where bedrock was present within the soil horizon (2-3 feet) to be treated as areas of exposures. In these areas the bedrock elevation was mapped as only slightly below the surface elevation, so contours on the 7«' topographic maps were closely followed in mapping the bedrock elevation. Consequently, on the completed map of bedrock elevation, these areas display much more contorted and crenulated contour lines than the areas where only drill control was utilized. This allows the user a general feeling for the accuracy of the map; the more crenulated the contours, the more control was available for the mapping, and the more accurate is the mapping.

The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is a way of subdividing and describing land in the United States. This dataset contains the Townships, Ranges, and Sections of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) in Iowa. Coordinates were digitized from U. S. Geological Survey 7.5' topographic maps (paper copies) using a digitizing program developed in-house by the Geological Survey Bureau, Iowa DNR. The digitizing tablet accuracy was 1/50 inch. Section lines from individual quads were combined and edited. Further subdivisions into Quarter sections (up to 3) were done with an ArcView Script on regular-shaped sections.

This Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the bedrock surface elevation in Iowa was compiled using all available data, principally information from GEOSAM, supplemented with well and boring information from the Iowa DOT, exposure reports from Iowa Geological & Water Survey reports and files, and the Department of Soil Conservation county soil maps for Iowa. The soil maps were especially valuable, since they identified soils that encountered bedrock within the soil horizon, and less dependably also spot-located rock exposures. A 50 foot contour interval was chosen for the map because it was considered to best represent the accuracy of the well data, allowed for fairly good representation of the bedrock surface in areas with limited well control, and was mappable in high relief areas (the contours packed so close together that it precluded mapping or forced the software to snap-join contours). The 50 foot contour interval also allowed areas where bedrock was present within the soil horizon (2-3 feet) to be treated as areas of exposures. In these areas the bedrock elevation was mapped as only slightly below the surface elevation, so contours on the 7«' topographic maps were closely followed in mapping the bedrock elevation. Consequently, on the completed map of bedrock elevation, these areas display much more contorted and crenulated contour lines than the areas where only drill control was utilized.

This dataset provides the geographic names data for Iowa. All names data products are extracted from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the Federal Government's repository of official geographic names. The GNIS contains the federally recognized name of each feature and defines its location by State, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates. GNIS also lists variant names, which are non-official names by which a feature is or was known. Other attributes include unique Feature ID and feature class. Feature classes under the purview of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names include natural features, unincorporated populated places, canals, channels, reservoirs, and more.

This coverage outlines the boundary of the Loess Hills in Iowa at 1:100,000 scale. Criteria applied to the delineation of the Loess Hills included drainage density, drainage divides, density of isolated hillforms, crenulated contours, slopes greater than 15%, presence of catstep features, general loess thickness and earlier mapping. The following sources were utilized: 1:100,000 and 1:24,000 scale USGS topographic maps, USDA-NRCS STATSGO Soil Survey Grid Information, Digital Elevation Module, and the 1:2,000,000 Landforms of Iowa Coverage.

An interactive map of contour maps, fishing structure locations, topography and more.

Digital raster graphic (1:100,000-scale DRG) is a scanned image of a US Geological Survey (USGS) standard series topographic map. The image is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the Universal Transverse Mercator projection.

This dataset contains commonly used codes for counties and polygons representing boundaries for counties of the State of Iowa. Boundaries were developed from a set of 99 individual coverages of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) for each county in the state. The PLSS coverages were digitized from paper copies of 7.5' topographic quadrangle maps. River boundaries were also digitized from 7.5' maps.

A landscape is a collection of land shapes or land forms. Landform regions are a grouping of individual landscape features that have a common geomophology. In Iowa, these regions are composed of earth materials derived from glacial, wind, river, and marine environments of the geologic past. This is a new representation of the landforms of Iowa, at a scale of 1:24,000, and derived from a variety of sources including soils, slope maps, topographic maps. Lineated Inliers are areas of Southern Iowa Driftplain within the Iowan Surface. They have lineated edges and ridges oriented from northwest to southeast. They contain areas of deep loess.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists conducted field data collection efforts between October 25th and 31st, 2020 at several sites in eastern Iowa using high accuracy surveying technologies. The work was initiated as an effort to validate commercially acquired topographic light detection and ranging (lidar) data that was collected between December 7th, 2019 and November 19th, 2020 using wide area mapping lidar systems for the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). The goal was to compare and validate the airborne lidar data to topographic, structural, and infrastructural data collected through more traditional means (e.g., Global Navigational Satellite System (GNSS) surveying). Evaluating these data will provide valuable information on the performance of wide area topographic lidar mapping capabilities that are becoming more widely used in 3DEP. The airborne lidar was collected to support the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) High Resolution Elevation Enterprise Program and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship Iowa Flood Plain Program, in addition to the 3DEP mission. The data contained within this particular release are comprised of conventional survey (i.e. total station and GNSS) and ground based lidar data.

A landscape is a collection of land shapes or land forms. Landform regions are a grouping of individual landscape features that have a common geomophology. In Iowa, these regions are composed of earth materials derived from glacial, wind, river, and marine environments of the geologic past. This is a new representation of the landform regions of Iowa, at a scale of 1:24,000, and derived from a variety of sources including soils, slope maps, topographic maps

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program Long Term Resource Monitoring (LTRM) element has overseen the collection, processing, and serving of bathymetric data since 1989. A systemic data collection for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) was completed in 2010. Water depth in aquatic systems is important for describing the physical characteristics of a river. Bathymetric maps are used for conducting spatial inventories of the aquatic habitat and detecting bed and elevation changes due to sedimentation. Bathymetric data is widely used, specifically for studies of water level management alternatives, modeling navigation impacts and hydraulic conditions, and environmental assessments such as vegetation distribution patterns. The bathymetry "footprint" is a database that can be used as a tool to provide a quick search of collection dates corresponding to bathymetric coverages within each LTRM pool.

This coverage contains the section lines for the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). These lines form polygons which are labelled for PLSS township, range and section number. Coordinates were digitized from U. S. Geological Survey 7.5' topographic maps (paper copies) using a digitizing program developed in-house by the Geological Survey Bureau, Iowa DNR. The digitizing tablet accuracy was 1/50 inch. Section lines from individual quads were combined and edited using PC Arc/Info.

A landscape is a collection of land shapes or land forms. Landform regions are a grouping of individual landscape features that have a common geomophology. In Iowa, these regions are composed of earth materials derived from glacial, wind, river, and marine environments of the geologic past. This is a new representation of the landform regions of Iowa, at a scale of 1:24,000, and derived from a variety of sources including soils, slope maps, topographic maps Paha Ridges are landforms that tend to be in the southern part of the Iowan Surface, that are prominant hills that are oriented from northwest to southeast, and typically have large deposits of loess on them. They were developed during the period of mass wasting that developed the Iowan surface, and are considered erosional remnants and are often at interstream divides. Paha generally rise above the surrounding landscape more than 20 feet. The ridges of these Paha are often wooded with mixed oak components, and soils often indicate development under forest or transitional cover type. Collections of Paha are called lineated inliers and can be found in another coverage

This is a metadata compilation for geologic bedrock maps of Iowa. Maps listed: Estimated Depth to Bedrock, Iowa Bedrock Geology, Iowa Bedrock Surface Elevation (raster), Iowa Bedrock Surface Elevation (vector). The compilation is published as an Excel workbook containing header features including title, description, author, citation, originator, distributor, and resource URL links to scanned maps for download. The Excel workbook contains seven worksheets, including information about the template, notes related to revisions of the template, resource provider information, the data, a field list (data mapping view) and vocabularies (data valid terms) used to populate the data worksheet . This resource was provided by the Iowa Geological and Water Survey and made available for distribution through the National Geothermal Data System.

These data are part of a larger USGS project to develop an updated geospatial database of mines, mineral deposits and mineral regions in the United States. Mine and prospect-related symbols, such as those used to represent prospect pits, mines, adits, dumps, tailings, etc., hereafter referred to as “mine” symbols or features, are currently being digitized on a state-by-state basis from the 7.5-minute (1:24,000-scale) and the 15-minute (1:48,000 and 1:62,500-scale) archive of the USGS Historical Topographic Maps Collection, or acquired from available databases (California and Nevada, 1:24,000-scale only). Compilation of these features is the first phase in capturing accurate locations and general information about features related to mineral resource exploration and extraction across the U.S. To date, the compilation of 500,000-plus point and polygon mine symbols from approximately 67,000 maps of 22 western states has been completed: Arizona (AZ), Arkansas (AR), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Idaho (ID), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Louisiana (LA), Minnesota (MN), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), North Dakota (ND), Nebraska (NE), New Mexico (NM), Nevada (NV), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), South Dakota (SD), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Washington (WA), and Wyoming (WY). The process renders not only a more complete picture of exploration and mining in the western U.S., but an approximate time line of when these activities occurred. The data may be used for land use planning, assessing abandoned mine lands and mine-related environmental impacts, assessing the value of mineral resources from Federal, State and private lands, and mapping mineralized areas and systems for input into the land management process. The data are presented as three groups of layers based on the scale of the source maps. No reconciliation between the data groups was done.

Surface elevation of Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer. Iowa Hydrogeologic Map Server - Cambrian-Ordovician Surface Elevation.