Volunteer to help the USGS collect & update geographic data

Volunteer to help the USGS collect & update geographic data
Description

The National Map Corp - Volunteer Map Editor

The US Geological Survey (USGS) is recruiting volunteers to collect and update USGS geographic data. Similar to how other online crowdsourcing cartographic applications allow anyone to collect, edit, and use geographic data through an online map editor, the USGS has developed an online editor customized to our data needs that allows volunteers to contribute data to The National Map. We are looking for people like you to work with us to collect data for the USGS. The data you will collect during this project will be loaded into The National Map.

If you have access to the Internet and are willing to dedicate some time editing map data we hope you will consider participating! You do not need to live in any particular area to participate. Our editing guidelines explain how you can contribute data from anywhere.

http://www.volunteer.gov/results.cfm?ID=13581


Availability: 4/17/2013--12/31/2016
Created: 2/20/2015

As a volunteer contributor to OpenStreetMap.org with 900+ changesets under my belt let me point out that the project seems to be lacking greater purpose that typically would motivate majority of volunteers. When I make changes to OSM I know that lots of people will immediately benefit from what I do including myself and I don't mind that entire industry sprouted up building smartphone apps that profit from my contributions as long as everyone gets better trail maps in the end.

When I look at USGS mapping project I don't really see how to answer the "Why?" question.

I think USGS would do a lot better if it got existing OSM contributors to agree to share their OSM contributions under USGS terms of use. After all I did fix up a good number of schools and fire stations in OSM but I don't see myself creating an additional account just for that purpose.

I don't know anything about streets, but I do know I'm looking for trails. Does OSM do that? The latest digital renderings of the USGS maps (my standard for 40 year) do NOT include trails. That is a "some day" dream.

While OSM is far from complete it already has a lot of trails & parking areas marked on it. For example, take a look here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/44.2644/-71.2910&layers=C

OSM's open data model allows for some cool applications like the ability to see and download (almost?) entire length of Appalachian Trail: http://waymarkedtrails.org/en/relation/156553?zoom=12&lat=44.30626&lon=-71.24936&hill=0.5

There are lots of OSM smartphone apps for Apple iOS and Android (my personal favorite is OsmAnd+ - for the record I don't have any financial interest in this product) and I routinely download OSM for my Garmin GPS from here: http://daveh.dev.openstreetmap.org/garmin/Lambertus/latest/kml/kml.html