As many of you may know, I’m a land surveyor by training and I love maps. There are some really great free Online Mapping Applications available now. Here are a few that I use regularly in my works and have found quite useful. It’s too bad that they couldn’t collaborate on various conventions such as user front ends, baseline imagery, etc. Also, many of the systems show information available on other sites but perhaps not as well, for example you can see National Wetland Inventory wetlands on the USGS National Map Viewer, but not with as much utility as on the National Wetland Inventory Mapping System. Makes sense. While they’re all still useful, the learning curve is probably steeper than it has to be.
- USGS National Map Viewer: One of the nice things about this application is the ability to scale reasonably accurate NAD83 elevations off it, and state plane coordinates. Lots of data layers to play with
- US Fish & Wildlife National Wetland Inventory Mapping System: I’ve written about this site before. It combines a clickable wetland inventory map (with keys) with relatively current high resolution photographs.
- Maine Office of GIS: This site can be a little confusing to use because it’s got SO MUCH information available. One thing that makes it a little easier to use is the Digital Data Catalog makes most of it’s data available as a Google Earth layer via downloadable .kml files.
- Qgis, A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System
- FEMA Map Service Center: This and the next site are both Federal Emergency Management Agency Flood Mapping Services. The service center allows you to create a small map centered on your property showing the flood zone if any (unless you happen to be in Whitefield) which you can then download and print.
- FEMA Mapping Information Platform: This site provides access to the National Map PLatform for flood maps and flood map information including lots of other information (LOMA or letter of map amendment for example) and the different zones, explanatory material, etc. Good stuff.
- Google Earth: I can’t imagine there are people out there who haven’t played with Google Earth yet. Nuff said.
- Beginning with Habitat Map Viewer is an on-line, interactive mapping application. The Map Viewer displays the most up-to-date BwH data and provides other mapping tools. Here are some maps I built using their map viewer showing Clary Lake and environs:
- The USGS StreamStats Program, an excellent web-based application for investigating basin characteristics (watersheds) and stream flow statistics.