March 1989

December 1998

This data set contains the sea floor topographic contours, sun-illuminated topographic imagery, and backscatter intensity generated from a multibeam sonar survey of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary region off Boston, Massachusetts, an area of approximately 1100 square nautical miles. The Stellwagen Bank NMS Mapping Project is designed to provide detailed maps of the Stellwagen Bank region's environments and habitats and the first complete multibeam topographic and sea floor characterization maps of a significant region of the shallow EEZ. Data were collected on four cruises over a two year period from the fall of 1994 to the fall of 1996. The surveys were conducted aboard the Candian Hydrographic Service vessel Frederick G. Creed, a SWATH (Small Waterplane Twin Hull) ship that surveys at speeds of 16 knots. The multibeam data were collected utilizing a Simrad Subsea EM 1000 Multibeam Echo Sounder (95 kHz) that is permanently installed in the hull of the Creed.

Topographic map of Dedham, Massachusetts with contours and shaded relief. Shaded relief and contours were generated from LiDAR data collected on December 8th, 2013 and also April 7th, 2014.

The quadrangle template datalayer contains the boundaries of the 189 1:25,000 USGS 7.5-minute topographic map sheets that cover Massachusetts.See full metadata.

The ArcGIS Online USGS Topographic Maps image service contains over 181,000 historical topographic quadrangle maps (quads) dating from 1879 to 2006. These maps are part of the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC) which includes all the historical quads that had been printed since the USGS topographic mapping program was initiated in 1879. Previously available only as printed lithographic copies, the historical maps were scanned “as is” to create high-resolution images that capture the content and condition of each map sheet. All maps were georeferenced, and map metadata was captured as part of the process.

For the Esri collection, the scanned maps were published as this ArcGIS Online image service which can be viewed on the web and allows users to download individual scanned images. Esri’s collection contains historical quads (excluding orthophotos) dating from 1879 to 2006 with scales ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:250,000. The scanned maps can be used in ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Enterprise. They can also be downloaded as georeferenced TIFs for use in these and other applications.

We make it easy for you to explore and download these maps, or quickly create an ArcGIS Online map, using our Historical Topo Map Explorer app. The app provides a visual interface to search and explore the historical maps by geographic extent, publication year, and map scale. And you can overlay the historical maps on a satellite image or 3D hillshade and add labels for current geographic features.

This tile service is derived from a digital raster graphic of the historical 15-minute USGS topographic quadrangle maps of coastal towns in Massachusetts. These quadrangles were mosaicked together to create a single data layer of the coast of Massachusetts and a large portion of the southeastern area of the state.The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) obtained the map images from the Harvard Map Collection. The maps were produced in the late 1890s and early 20th century at a scale of 1:62,500 or 1:63,360 and are commonly known as 15-minute quadrangle maps because each map covers a four-sided area of 15 minutes of latitude and 15 minutes of longitude.

The Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) launched the Shoreline Change Project in 1989 to identify erosion-prone areas of the Massachusetts coast. Seventy-six maps were produced in 1997 depicting a statistical analysis of shoreline change on ocean-facing shorelines from the mid-1800s to 1978 using multiple data sources. In 2001, a 1994 shoreline was added. More recently, in cooperation with CZM, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) delineated a new shoreline for Massachusetts using color aerial ortho-imagery from 2008 to 2009 and topographic lidar data collected in 2007. This update included a marsh shoreline, which was defined to be the tonal difference between low- and high-marsh seen in ortho-photos. Further cooperation between CZM and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has resulted in another update in 2018, which includes beach shorelines, marsh shorelines and dune parameters, all of which were calculated from 2013-14 topographic lidar data. This metadata fil ...

MassGIS scanned the USGS topographic quadrangles to create a digital database that can provide images of the paper maps. These images can be used as a backdrop for plotting vector data and for interpretation and analysis. MassGIS scanned the 15-minute series (vintage 1982-1990) where these maps were available; the 7.5-minute maps (1967-1979) were used elsewhere. Note that the elevation labels for the contours on the maps may be in meters or feet, depending on the vintage of the original paper map that MassGIS scanned. Contour labels on maps from 1982 and later are in meters; labels on maps from 1967 through 1979 are in feet. See the

Culminating more than four years of processing data, NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) have completed Earth's most extensive global topographic map. The mission is a collaboration among NASA, NGA, and the German and Italian space agencies. For 11 days in February 2000, the space shuttle Endeavour conducted the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) using C-Band and X-Band interferometric synthetic aperture radars to acquire topographic data over 80% of the Earth's land mass, creating the first-ever near-global data set of land elevations. This data was used to produce topographic maps (digital elevation maps) 30 times as precise as the best global maps used today. The SRTM system gathered data at the rate of 40,000 per minute over land. They reveal for the first time large, detailed swaths of Earth's topography previously obscured by persistent cloudiness. The data will benefit scientists, engineers, government agencies and the public with an ever-growing array of uses. The SRTM radar system mapped Earth from 56 degrees south to 60 degrees north of the equator. The resolution of the publicly available data is three arc-seconds (1/1,200th of a degree of latitude and longitude, about 295 feet, at Earth's equator). The final data release covers Australia and New Zealand in unprecedented uniform detail. It also covers more than 1,000 islands comprising much of Polynesia and Melanesia in the South Pacific, as well as islands in the South Indian and Atlantic oceans. SRTM data are being used for applications ranging from land use planning to "virtual" Earth exploration. Currently, the mission's homepage "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm" provides direct access to recently obtained earth images. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission C-band data for North America and South America are available to the public. A list of complete public data set is available at "http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/dataprod.htm" The data specifications are within the following parameters: 30-meter X 30-meter spatial sampling with 16 meter absolute vertical height accuracy, 10-meter relative vertical height accuracy, and 20-meter absolute horizontal circular accuracy. From the JPL Mission Products Summary, "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/dataprelimdescriptions.html". The primary products of the SRTM mission are the digital elevation maps of most of the Earth's surface. Visualized images of these maps are available for viewing online. Below you will find descriptions of the types of images that are being generated: Radar Image Radar Image with Color as Height Radar Image with Color Wrapped Fringes -Shaded Relief Perspective View with B/W Radar Image Overlaid Perspective View with Radar Image Overlaid, Color as Height Perspective View of Shaded Relief Perspective View with Landsat or other Image Overlaid Contour Map - B/W with Contour Lines Stereo Pair Anaglypgh The SRTM radar contained two types of antenna panels, C-band and X-band. The near-global topographic maps of Earth called Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are made from the C-band radar data. These data were processed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and are being distributed through the United States Geological Survey's EROS Data Center. Data from the X-band radar are used to create slightly higher resolution DEMs but without the global coverage of the C-band radar. The SRTM X-band radar data are being processed and distributed by the German Aerospace Center, DLR.

Springs and sinkholes in the Ozark Plateaus Physiographic Province (Ozarks) in Arkansas were digitized from 1:24,000-scale topographic maps to produce a digital dataset of karst features. Karst landscapes generally are created from bedrock dissolution that results in distinctive landforms, including sinkholes, springs, caves, and sinking streams, and a high degree of interaction between surface water and groundwater. The dataset can be used to better understand groundwater flow in the karst landscape of the Arkansas Ozarks and potential effects of karst-feature density on water quality, geomorphology, water resources, and karst hazards. In the Ozarks, karst features are present in several limestone and dolomite formations (for example, the Boone Formation, Pitkin Limestone, and Powell Dolomite). Springs (points) and sinkholes (polygons and centroid points) were digitized from over 200 topographic quadrangle maps from 22 different counties with published dates ranging from 1942 to 2014. The digitization efforts using the topographic maps resulted in 805 springs and 1,242 sinkholes across the Arkansas Ozarks. This dataset represents the springs and sinkhole centroid points. Topographic maps were the only source of data used to provide a distribution from a single data source over the Ozarks in Arkansas. This karst-feature dataset will be a resource for years to come in karst science, water science, geomorphology, and other fields.

The topographic maps are generated from digital landscape and terrain models and the official real estate cadastre information system ALKIS and visualized according to the nationwide ATKIS signature catalogue. The topographic maps are comprehensive and available in the uniform geodetic reference system and map projection for the state of Brandenburg. They are available as analogue map prints (plots), as raster data and as web services. When using the data, the license conditions must be observed.

The topographic maps are generated from digital landscape and terrain models and the official real estate cadastre information system ALKIS and visualized according to the nationwide ATKIS signature catalogue. The topographic maps are comprehensive and available in the uniform geodetic reference system and map projection for the state of Brandenburg. They are available as analogue map prints (plots), as raster data and as web services. When using the data, the license conditions must be observed.

The National Assessment of Coastal Change Hazards project derives beach morphology features from lidar elevation data for the purpose of understanding and predicting storm impacts to our nation's coastlines. This dataset defines beach slopes along the United States Northeast Atlantic Ocean for Massachusetts for data collected at various times between 2000 and 2013

Version 10.0 of these data are part of a larger U.S. Geological Survey (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, have been digitized from the 7.5-minute (1:24,000, 1:25,000-scale; and 1:10,000, 1:20,000 and 1:30,000-scale in Puerto Rico only) and the 15-minute (1:48,000 and 1:62,500-scale; 1:63,360-scale in Alaska only) archive of the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC), 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. The compilation of 725,690 point and polygon mine symbols from approximately 106,350 maps across 50 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (PR) and the District of Columbia (DC) has been completed: Alabama (AL), Alaska (AK), Arizona (AZ), Arkansas (AR), California (CA), Colorado (CO), Connecticut (CT), Delaware (DE), Florida (FL), Georgia (GA), Hawaii (HI), Idaho (ID), Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Iowa (IA), Kansas (KS), Kentucky (KY), Louisiana (LA), Maine (ME), Maryland (MD), Massachusetts (MA), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), Mississippi (MS), Missouri (MO), Montana (MT), Nebraska (NE), Nevada (NV), New Hampshire (NH), New Jersey (NJ), New Mexico (NM), New York (NY), North Carolina (NC), North Dakota (ND), Ohio (OH), Oklahoma (OK), Oregon (OR), Pennsylvania (PA), Rhode Island (RI), South Carolina (SC), South Dakota (SD), Tennessee (TN), Texas (TX), Utah (UT), Vermont (VT), Virginia (VA), Washington (WA), West Virginia (WV), Wisconsin (WI), and Wyoming (WY). The process renders not only a more complete picture of exploration and mining in the U.S., but an approximate timeline of when these activities occurred. These 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. These data are presented as three groups of layers based on the scale of the source maps. No reconciliation between the data groups was done.

Yearly topographically modified effective energy and mass transfer (EEMT-topo) (MJ m−2 yr−1) was calculated for the Valles Caldera, upper part of the Jemez River basin by summing the 12 monthly values. Effective energy and mass flux varies seasonally, especially in the desert southwestern United States where contemporary climate includes a bimodal precipitation distribution that concentrates in winter (rain or snow depending on elevation) and summer monsoon periods. This seasonality of EEMT-topo can be estimated by calculating monthly values using topographic variations of solar radiation, temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration and surface wetting as described by Rasmussen et al. (2015). The following datasets were used to compute EEMT-topo: the precipitation climatology (1981-2010) data from the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State Universityat an 800-m spatial resolution; the Jemez River Basin 2010 LiDARbased DEM dataset was up-scaled to 10 m DEM; the local meteorological data (Temperature, RH, Wind Speed and Pressure) downloaded for the Valles Caldera National Preserve Climate Stationsfrom 2003 to 2012; 2011 National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) multispectral (4-band) images for the Valles Caldera downloaded from the USGS Seamless Data Distribution; and MODIS Albedo 16-Day L3 Global 500m data (MCD43A3) obtained from theLand Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC).

December 2024

This data set contains the locations of boulder ridges greater than or equal to 1 meter in height in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Region off Boston, Massachusetts, an area of approximately 1100 nautical square miles. The Stellwagen Bank NMS Mapping Project is designed to provide detailed maps of the Stellwagen Bank region's environmental habitats and the first complete multibeam topographic and sea floor characterization maps of a significant region of the shallow EEZ. The boulder ridges were identified using multibeam topographic imagery and backscatter intensity of the seabed and video and photographic images collected from 1994 to 2003.

This data set contains the sun-illuminated topographic imagery and backscatter intensity generated from a multibeam sonar survey of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary region off Boston, Massachusetts, an area of approximately 1100 square nautical miles. The Stellwagen Bank NMS Mapping Project is designed to provide detailed maps of the Stellwagen Bank region's environments and habitats and the first complete multibeam topographic and sea floor characterization maps of a significant region of the shallow EEZ. Data were collected on four cruises over a two year period from the fall of 1994 to the fall of 1996. The surveys were conducted aboard the Canadian Hydrographic Service vessel Frederick G. Creed, a SWATH (Small Waterplane Twin Hull) ship that surveys at speeds of up to 16 knots. The multibeam data were collected utilizing a Simrad Subsea EM 1000 Multibeam Echo Sounder (95 kHz) that is permanently installed in the hull of the Creed.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Woods Hole Field Center (WHFC), in cooperation with the USGS Water Resources Division conducted high-resolution seismic-reflection surveys along the nearshore areas of outer Cape Cod, Massachusetts from Chatham to Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The objectives of this investigation were to determine the stratigraphy of the nearshore in relation to the Quaternary stratigraphy of outer Cape Cod by correlating units between the nearshore and onshore and to define the geologic framework of the region.

[Summary provided by the USGS.]