[Imports] Trails in National Forests of New Mexico USA

[Samat K Jain]

On Friday, September 03, 2010 02:46:53 am Richard Weait wrote:
> If the import is really small and "local" to you then you could be
> your own community, but engaging with other mappers in the area can be
> worthwhile.

For the first few forests I mentioned, I'm the only immediate mapper in the 
area, so it is just me. Is there an easy way to find other users in nearby 
urban areas? The forests themselves are mostly pristine, nothing but 
boundaries and TIGER data.

> You've made no reference to the license of the trail shape files.  I
> know that federal data is published without copyright restrictions
> (PD), but federal agencies can also re-publish data from other
> sources.  That re-published data does not fall under the unrestricted
> license automatically.

AFAIK from the metadata (Lincoln National Forest as an example):

  http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/gis/lin/Trail.htm

the originator is the USFS, so I am assuming it is PD. I'll check the dataset 
for each forest as I go along but I think it unlikely that this data be 
licensed from another, since they are all managed federal lands (i.e. there 
isn't much commercial use for this data).

> > I've noticed that a much of this data is a little off…
> 
> hmmm, how little?  :-)  Perhaps there is a better source?

It varies. Some trails are spot-on, some have a completely different shape. I 
believe the issue is that trails are destroyed or moved around frequently, and 
trails only get repaired/cleared/checked every 1-2 years by forest service 
crews.

I doubt there is a better source.

-- 
Samat K Jain <http://samat.org/> | GPG: 0x4A456FBA

On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
-- W.C. Fields (314)