This map of Minnesota cities, townships, and counties was published by MnGeo in January 2019. The primary data set for the map is the "Cities, Townships, and Unorganized Territories" (MnCTU) data maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Other reference data on the map include County Seats and Other Cities, County Boundaries, Interstate, US Trunk, and State Trunk Highways, Major Rivers, Lakes, County and State Boundaries. The download is a PDF file with embedded layers that can be printed at E-scale (36" x 48").

This medium-scale (nominally 1:24,000) dataset represents the boundaries of cities, townships, and unorganized territories (CTUs) in Minnesota. The Minnesota Geospatial Information Office created the initial CTU dataset by updating a municipal boundary file maintained by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT). Update information was gathered primarily from boundary adjustment records maintained by the Office of Administrative Hearings, Municipal Boundary Adjustment Unit. MnDOT has maintained the file since 2014.

Note: Cities and Townships represented in this dataset are political (civil) townships as recognized by the State of MN, not congressional or public land survey townships. Unorganized territory subdivisions are those defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, which often differ from those defined by a county.

Check other metadata records in this package for more information on CTUInformation.


Link to ESRI Feature Service:

City, Township, and Unorganized Territory in Minnesota: City, Township, and Unorganized Territory

Public Parcels - Metro CTUsThis web map was created by Metro Transit's Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Office to showcase the newly expanded public parcel data in relation to existing and planned transit facilities across the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. As of August, 2019, the parcels can also be viewed in relation to Federally approved Opportunity Zones. More information on the new US Department of Treasury Opportunity Zone Program can be found here. The purpose of the public parcel data is to increase awareness of the location and quantity of publicly owned lands at all levels of government. The Q-1 2020 dataset now includes more than 35,000 parcels from across 128 cities, townships, and unorganized territories (CTUs). These parcels are further classified and displayed by eight broad ownership or administrative categories. Users can view, analyze, share, and research publicly-owned lands that may be good candidates for TOD or some other higher/better use.The purpose of the original pilot project was to increase awareness of publicly owned parcel locations relative to Metro-area transit facilities and facilitate TOD analyses. While the current geographic extent of the data has been greatly expanded, the purpose remains the same; to raise awareness of publicly owned land for the highest & best use.For those with desktop GIS software, the Public Parcel shapefile and/or geodatabase can be downloaded here: https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-state-metc-plan-public-parcels-metro-ctus

The 2022 cartographic boundary KMLs are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. The cartographic boundary files include both incorporated places (legal entities) and census designated places or CDPs (statistical entities). An incorporated place is established to provide governmental functions for a concentration of people as opposed to a minor civil division (MCD), which generally is created to provide services or administer an area without regard, necessarily, to population. Places always nest within a state, but may extend across county and county subdivision boundaries. An incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions. CDPs are delineated for the decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places. CDPs are delineated to provide data for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name, but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located. The boundaries for CDPs often are defined in partnership with state, local, and/or tribal officials and usually coincide with visible features or the boundary of an adjacent incorporated place or another legal entity. CDP boundaries often change from one decennial census to the next with changes in the settlement pattern and development; a CDP with the same name as in an earlier census does not necessarily have the same boundary. The only population/housing size requirement for CDPs is that they must contain some housing and population. The generalized boundaries of most incorporated places in this file are based on those as of January 1, 2022, as reported through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). The generalized boundaries of all CDPs are based on those delineated as part of the Census Bureau's Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) for the 2020 Census.

High resolution (10 meter) land surface temperature (LST) from September 1, 2022 is mapped for the seven-county metropolitan region of the Twin Cities. The goal of the map is to show the heat differences across the region and is not intended to show the maximum temperature that any specific area can reach. The raster dataset was computed at 30 meters using satellite imagery from Landsat 9 and downscaled to 10 meters using Copernicus Sentinel-2. These datasets were integrated using techniques modified from Ermida et al. 2020 and Onačillová et al. 2022). Open water was removed using ancillary data from OpenStreetMap and 2020 Generalized Land Use for the Twin Cities (Metropolitan Council).

First, Landsat 9 imagery taken at 11:59 am CDT on September 01, 2022 was processed into 30-meter resolution LST (based on Ermida et al. 2020). At this time, the air temperature was 88° F at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (NOAA). A model predicting LST based on spectral indices of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) was created and applied to 10-meter Sentenel-2 imagery. Sentinel-2 imagery was also taken on September 1, 2022, and this resulted in a 10-meter downscaled LST image (based on Onačillová et al. 2022). To account for anomalies in NDVI on the primary image date of September 1 (e.g., recently harvested agricultural fields), maximum NDVI occurring between July 1, 2022 and September 1, 2022 was used for both Landsat and Sentinel image processing. Water bodies were removed for all processing steps (OpenStreetMap 2023, Metropolitan Council 2021).

This dataset is an update to the 2016 LST data for the Twin Cities Region (Metropolitan Council).

The code to create and processes this dataset is available at: https://github.com/Metropolitan-Council/extreme.heat

Sources:
Ermida, S.L., Soares, P., Mantas, V., Göttsche, F.-M., Trigo, I.F., 2020. Google Earth Engine open-source code for Land Surface Temperature estimation from the Landsat series. Remote Sensing, 12 (9), 1471; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12091471.

Metropolitan Council. 2021. Generalized Land Use 2020. Minnesota Geospatial Commons. https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-state-metc-plan-generl-lnduse2020

Metropolitan Council. 2017. Land Surface Temperature for Climate Vulnerability Analysis. Minnesota Geospatial Commons. https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-state-metc-env-cva-lst2016

NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information, station USW00014922. September 1, 2022.

Onačillová, K., Gallay, M., Paluba, D., Péliová, A., Tokarčík, O., Laubertová, D. 2022. Combining Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 data in Google Earth Engine to derive higher resolution land surface temperature maps in urban environment. Remote Sensing, 14 (16), 4076. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14164076.

OpenStreetMap contributors. 2023. Retrieved from https://planet.openstreetmap.org on April 12, 2023.

Minnesota GreenStep Cities is a voluntary challenge, assistance and recognition program to help cities achieve their sustainability and quality-of-life goals. This free continuous improvement program, managed by a public-private partnership, is based upon 29 best practices. Each best practice can be implemented by completing one or more actions at a 1, 2 or 3-star level, from a list of four to eight actions. ReST service documentation for developers

This map provides a spatial illustration of different means by which racial segregation was historically reinforced across the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The map focuses largely on data from the 1940s, and includes the following data layers:Population by Race - Data based on 1940 US Census that shows the percentage of the non-white population at the census tract level. This data was downloaded from NHGIS, with a spatial join performed to combine the census table and historic tracts (Citation: Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Katherine Knowles, Tracy Kugler, Finn Roberts, and Steven Ruggles, IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 18.0. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2023).HOLC Map Zones by Number of Covenants - This layer displays a summary of the number of racially exclusive covenants within the area of zones designated by grade on HOLC redlining maps. The polygons of each grade zone were digitized by the Mapping Inequality Project (University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab) and are symbolized by the grade colors on the original maps. The data on racially exclusive covenants in Twin Cities neighborhoods was downloaded from the Mapping Prejudice Project (University of Minnesota) and is symbolized by the size of each feature.Greenbook Locations - This layer displays locations included on Greenbook travel guides from the 1940s, which indicate safe businesses for African American travelers to American Cities. This data comes from a service layer created by Shana Crosson (University of Minnesota).This spatial extent of this map is limited to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. It was created as part of an in-class exercise in February of 2024.

Map Catalog is powered by the Memento Server software and provides a continuous view across multiple geospatial PDFs. The PDF maps currently available are 1K USNG (topo and aerial) maps from four metro counties(Anoka, Carver, Dakota and Ramsey), 1K USNG Topo of cities and state parks in Minnesota, 10K USNG Aerial maps for Minnesota, US Topo for the metro and Dakota County Park maps, City Street maps and Half Section maps. Map update frequency varies.

A shapefile was generated from ArcINFO coverages, which were in turn created by digitizing a 1968 paper map of land use in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. The map was originally published by the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission.

NCED is currently involved in researching the effectiveness of anaglyph maps in the classroom and are working with educators and scientists to interpret various Earth-surface processes. Based on the findings of the research, various activities and interpretive information will be developed and available for educators to use in their classrooms. Keep checking back with this website because activities and maps are always being updated. We believe that anaglyph maps are an important tool in helping students see the world and are working to further develop materials and activities to support educators in their use of the maps.

This website has various 3-D maps and supporting materials that are available for download. Maps can be printed, viewed on computer monitors, or projected on to screens for larger audiences. Keep an eye on our website for more maps, activities and new information. Let us know how you use anaglyph maps in your classroom. Email any ideas or activities you have to ncedmaps@umn.edu

Anaglyph paper maps are a cost effective offshoot of the GeoWall Project. Geowall is a high end visualization tool developed for use in the University of Minnesota's Geology and Geophysics Department. Because of its effectiveness it has been expanded to 300 institutions across the United States. GeoWall projects 3-D images and allows students to see 3-D representations but is limited because of the technology. Paper maps are a cost effective solution that allows anaglyph technology to be used in classroom and field-based applications.

Maps are best when viewed with RED/CYAN anaglyph glasses!

A note on downloading: "viewable" maps are .jpg files; "high-quality downloads" are .tif files. While it is possible to view the latter in a web-browser in most cases, the download may be slow. As an alternative, try right-clicking on the link to the high-quality download and choosing "save" from the pop-up menu that results. Save the file to your own machine, then try opening the saved copy. This may be faster than clicking directly on the link to open it in the browser.

World Map: 3-D map that highlights oceanic bathymetry and plate boundaries.

Continental United States: 3-D grayscale map of the Lower 48.

Western United States: 3-D grayscale map of the Western United States with state boundaries.

Regional Map: 3-D greyscale map stretching from Hudson Bay to the Central Great Plains. This map includes the Western Great Lakes and the Canadian Shield.

Minnesota Map: 3-D greyscale map of Minnesota with county and state boundaries.

Twin Cities: 3-D map extending beyond Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Twin Cities Confluence Map: 3-D map highlighting the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. This map includes most of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Minneapolis, MN: 3-D topographical map of South Minneapolis.

Bassets Creek, Minneapolis: 3-D topographical map of the Bassets Creek watershed.

North Minneapolis: 3-D topographical map highlighting North Minneapolis and the Mississippi River.

St. Paul, MN: 3-D topographical map of St. Paul.

Western Suburbs, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of St. Louis Park, Hopkins and Minnetonka area.

Minnesota River Valley Suburbs, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of Bloomington, Eden Prairie and Edina area.

Southern Suburbs, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of Burnsville, Lakeville and Prior Lake area.

Southeast Suburbs, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of South St. Paul, Mendota Heights, Apple Valley and Eagan area.

Northeast Suburbs, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of White Bear Lake, Maplewood and Roseville area.

Northwest Suburbs, Mississippi River, Twin Cities: 3-D topographical map of North Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center and Maple Grove area.

Blaine, MN: 3-D map of Blaine and the Mississippi River.

White Bear Lake, MN: 3-D topographical map of White Bear Lake and the surrounding area.

Maple Grove, MN: 3-D topographical mmap of the NW suburbs of the Twin Cities.

Description based on: 1932 sheet.; Each sheet lists the Commissioner of highways and the Chief Engineer.; On verso: Distance tables for various cities in Minnesota. on sheet 56 x 43 centimeters or smaller Scale approximately 1:1,530,000 Minnesota Transportation Maps

Moorhead MN City Limits for Open Data Site.

If there are any issues with the data in this map, service, or shp file please contact the Minneapolis GIS office.

Fugro Horizons Inc. acquired highly accurate Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) elevation data for the Twin Cities metropolitan region in east-central Minnesota in Spring and Fall 2011, with some reflights in Spring 2012. The data cover Anoka, Benton, Carver, Dakota, Goodhue, Hennepin, Isanti, Kanabec, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne and Washington counties.

Most of the data was collected at 1.5 points/square meter. Smaller areas were collected with 2 points/square meter and with 8 points/square meter:
1. 1.5 points/square meter covers Morrison, Mille Lacs, Benton, Isanti, Sherburne, Anoka, Meeker, Hennepin, Washington, Carver, Scott, and Goodhue counties.
2. 2 points/square meter covers the Dakota Block (southern 2/3 of Dakota County)
3. 8 points/square meter covers portions of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the City of Maple Grove
See map of block boundaries: https://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/chouse/elevation/metro_data_delivery_dates.pdf

Data are in the UTM Zone 15 coordinate system, NAD83 (HARN), NAVD88 Geoid09, meters. The tiling scheme is 16th USGS 1:24,000 quadrangle tiles.

The vendor delivered the data to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in several formats:

1. One-meter digital elevation model
2. Edge-of-water breaklines
3. Classified LAS formatted point cloud data

DNR staff quality-checked the data and created three additional products: two-foot contours, building outlines and hillshades.

This metadata record was created at the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office using information supplied by the vendor and by DNR.

A shapefile was generated from ArcINFO coverages, which were in turn created by digitizing a 1978 paper map of land use in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area. The map was originally published by the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Commission.

Exterior boundary, Annexation boundary, and County boundary coverages are examined to remove all overshoots, unwanted intersections; insure polygons are closed; and to see that there are no missing or duplicate polygon labels. Each symbolic layer is individually examined for completeness. There is no line duplication in exterior or annexation coverages. MCD's with detached or non-contiguous units (polygons) have the same polygon link/label code in each of their units. Completeness in the checking process is examined through the examination and comparison of all detail collected by County Staff. Sources used included: City Clerks, County Auditor's Office, Washington County Historical Courthouse, MN State Historical Society, Secretary of State, Minnesota Municipal Board, and MNDOT. https://www.co.washington.mn.us/1609/Municipal-Boundaries

A downloadable, printable 8.5 x 11 inch PDF map of the City of Norwood Young America and surrounding area.

These shapefiles of lakes, streams, wetlands, river bottoms, and the Mississippi River represent the hydrological landscape of Minneapolis and St. Paul as recorded in the original public land survey conducted between 1848 and 1858. The hydrologic features were digitized from scanned, georeferenced 1:24000 maps during the 2017 Faculty Research Sprint held at the University of Minnesota.

This is the feature map service for the City of Minneapolis City Council Ward Boundaries that were redistricted and adopted in April of 2012. These boundaries took effect January 1, 2014.

The regional bikeways dataset was created by the Minnesota Dept of Transportation (MNDOT) in 2003. It has been maintained and updated by the Land Management Information Center (LMIC) through contract with the Metropolitan Council.

Dataset includes bicycle routes within nine Twin Cities metropolitan counties: Anoka, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington, and Wright. The bikeways are from a number of sources including the Metro Bicycle Network map book (2001), supplemented by information from maps published by city, state, county and regional government agencies, and city and county planning maps. The map shows on-road and off-road bikeways, proposed and existing bikeways, and includes bike lanes, bike-able road shoulders, and trails.

The majority of the bikeways follow road centerlines of the MNDOT BaseMap 2002-Roads. A description of the bikeways attributes and sources of data are included in Section 5 of this document - Entity and Attribute Overview.