[Talk-us] NHD data extract

[Mike N]

On 4/26/2011 12:50 PM, Ben Supnik wrote:
> Richard's idea of building an NHD tile map for tracing seems very
> do-able, but it wouldn't save a ton of time - every water feature would
> have to be hand-traced, even though we do have them in vector form already.

   I'm not at all comfortable with the concept of tracing data. 
(Tracing aerial imagery makes sense)  How is tracing data thought to be 
any better than direct import?  That somehow slowing the process down 
will add "Soul" to the process?   Should we all plan to run around with 
Transits, and digging up survey markers so that we don't have to rely on 
those Soulless GPSs?   And that way we can confirm administrative 
boundaries while we're at it.  !?

   I don't follow everything being explored in the NHD import, but Ben 
and others are asking the exact right questions and heading in the right 
direction in my opinion.  The end result should be chunks of data small 
enough to allow local mappers to import and confirm a small area at a 
time.  An expensive spatial check may be necessary, not only to be able 
to properly divide the import into regions, but to properly interface 
with data that has already been uploaded without duplication.