James Fee GIS Blog

27 responses so far ↓

• 1 glenn // Aug 29, 2006 at 7:52 am

  just one observation that you seem to have missed.. the DRGs have always been free and ar easily found in loads of places… OOPS! Indeed though, having them all in one convenent place will be a nice addition. I’m sure that in 2 or 3 years once thay’ve all been uploaded by Jared the community will appreciate it! On the upside, the sale price of State bundles on CD was much more realistic than what you’d pay from some of the data whores around (ie. datadepot et al)

• 2 SGD // Aug 29, 2006 at 8:02 am

  I didn’t realize anybody still used DRG’s. Interesting.

• 3 Morphiussys // Aug 29, 2006 at 8:30 am

  I know some of the government contractors still use them to as a guide for political boundaries, lest they get more detailed data.

• 4 James Fee // Aug 29, 2006 at 8:56 am

  Are you kidding me Glenn? Of course I know DRGs can be downloaded for free.

• 5 KoS // Aug 29, 2006 at 9:17 am

  I think Glenn missed the previous discussion on this topic.

  SGD, we still use DRGs for feature text placement. Not the best source, but better than nothing.

  KoS

• 6 Erin // Aug 29, 2006 at 9:39 am

  I’m glad to see this. I’ve never paid for a DRG in my life, but sometimes tracking them down or getting fast download speeds has been a problem.

  I think it is a good idea, Glenn I’m not sure why you keep turning your nose up at this project. I know you support open data, and what does it matter if they get hosted at the internet archive for all to use?

• 7 Steven Citron-Pousty // Aug 29, 2006 at 9:52 am

  DRGs also make great background images for field crews. Most of them can orient themselves quickly on a DRG so putting your data on top allows for great field maps.

• 8 glenn // Aug 29, 2006 at 9:57 am

  All I’m saying is that these data have been freely available… that’s all… another resource serving them up is great and I welcome it. If the community truly wants to free something though how about the USGS DEMs which are truly being held hostage. This project has done very well and kudos to Jared. The only issue I have with it so far is that he actually contributed to the problem by paying a data provider $1600 for these data which could have easily been found on the web (give me 30 minutes and I could get you a list of sources for DRGs from every state). Other than that, I’m looking forward to seeing the data archived and made available and I will gladly refer people to that source. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m hot for free data sources and constantly refer my readers to them… cheers.

• 9 James Fee // Aug 29, 2006 at 10:00 am

  Actually Glenn he’s been trying to do it that way for quite some time. It took this ransom for people to respond.

  http://libre.redjar.org/maps/

• 10 Brian // Aug 29, 2006 at 10:24 am

  Yea what about dem’s! Drgs are from the 70’s. I Know there are sites where I can supposedly get free dems but its never that easy.

• 11 KoS // Aug 29, 2006 at 11:19 am

  Can’t you download 30m DEMs (some 10m)from USGS’s seamless data server? Not sure if the entire US is on the server, but I could always find what I needed.

  Granted it’s AOI download compared to tile sections, like DRGs.

  Side note, thinking about what Steve said. I hope no one is using DRGs as a basemap and creating data layers on them. From my experience, majority of the time features don’t line-up well between DOQQs and DRGs. Plus the few errors found in the line work(contours).

  KoS

• 12 James Fee // Aug 29, 2006 at 11:32 am

  Our field biologists like them because they are familiar with them. Sometimes actually they draw features on them when they don’t have a GPS. It is better than nothing in most cases, but we always note in metadata that DRGs were used in the creation of this data. We aren’t talking about engineering scale here, just biological observations.

• 13 Steven Citron-Pousty // Aug 29, 2006 at 11:41 am

  Yeah almost all of our biologists use GPS as well but they use the DRGs more for field orientation. Then again when you don’t have an aerial photo or GPS, you do the best with what ya got…

• 14 David Davis // Aug 29, 2006 at 12:48 pm

  I find it amazing how we have such a great outpouring of support for creating a true open archive of DRG data and we have people like Glenn and those on the Geowanking list being critical of the process. I never heard about this until James posted about it and he probably didn’t hear about it until the ransom was posted. Everyone claiming people could have downloaded data for free and done the same are late to the conversation. Jared seems to have decided the process was slow and needed a kick start. Kudos to him for taking this upon himself. Bad form to those trying to be a downer on this. I can’t understand how one can be negative about a real open source of data. I’d love to see this continue with more data.

• 15 Steven Citron-Pousty // Aug 29, 2006 at 12:57 pm

  You know the terms of service also make this same exercise viable for Landsat data. There were some research at NASA who was giving away his Landsat data for Israel which I used in my dissertation. The problem with Landsat is the storage and bandwidth requirements for moving around those large images.

  But how cool would that be…

• 16 Doug // Aug 29, 2006 at 2:13 pm

  I’ve always been in favor of free and legal DRGs.

• 17 Dijj monkey // Aug 30, 2006 at 3:38 pm

  We use DRGs for our field crews as well. Wouldn’t it be great if the USGS use their map updating resources to develop some newer, better DRG/DLG hybrid that provided hillshade, vectors (countours, transportation), annotation (physical feature annotation, etc) as separate layers?

• 18 Andrew Bailey // Aug 31, 2006 at 8:21 am

  Steven, Check out the Global Landcover Facility at the University of Maryland (http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/index.shtml). They’ve been giving away Landsat (and other sensor) data for free for years. It’s a great resource, and it saved me a a nice chunk of change on data for my thesis a few years ago.

  Dijj, Isn’t the USGS national map effort a step in that direction?

• 19 Andrew Bailey // Aug 31, 2006 at 8:29 am

  While I’m at it, the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service has a huge “base data” repository online. It is searchable on a state, county, or “defined geographic area” basis, and contains hydrologic unit boundaries, DRGs, quad sheet indexes, 1998 DOQQ mosaics, 2004 and 2005 NAIP mosaics, county soil survey and STASGO layers, and climate data.

  http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/GatewayHome.html

• 20 James Fee // Aug 31, 2006 at 9:02 am

  The problem Andrew is that the USDA site has that horrible map front end. I do think these interfaces work when you don’t know what you want, but for me they just get in the way.

• 21 Andrew Bailey // Aug 31, 2006 at 9:12 am

  I also rarely use the map front end, but find the “Quick County”, “Quick Counties”, and “Quick State” links to be real time-savers when I know what dataset I’m going for. They let you skip the map interface alltogether.

• 22 Paul Petersen // Aug 31, 2006 at 9:13 am

  My life got enormously better when I discovered the USDA site. I agree the the map front end is clunky, but I always bypass by just entering the county(s) I want. Trying the get data off the USGS seamless server is a much bigger endeavor.

• 23 James Fee // Aug 31, 2006 at 9:28 am

  Thanks guys, I didn’t see that.

• 24 Dijj monkey // Aug 31, 2006 at 11:33 am

  I LOVE mapping soils!! It’s the best!

  Anyone notice how the seamless website blows up your memory?

• 25 CMH // Sep 1, 2006 at 1:53 pm

  I was happy to see this until I read further and found this little show stopper (for me anyway) “The maps are still in their original GeoTiff format and still have the borders or map collars”

  Borders and collars!!!

  I think even more people would get behind a ransom of seamless DRG’s.

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