NH Fish and Game offering NH Topo Maps online

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cooperhill

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http://www.wildnh.com/maps/

"N.H. Topographic Maps Now Available on Fish and Game Website

CONCORD, N.H. – Great news for New Hampshire hikers, hunters and outdoor enthusiasts: the N.H. Fish and Game Department has created topographic maps of the entire state, available for free at www.wildnh.com/maps. The topo maps, in PDF format and sized to print on an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper, include the latest available geographic information for the state at a scale of 1:31,680 (1 inch per half-mile). The maps include roads, municipal boundaries, water bodies, conservation properties, state and national forests and parks and more.

To find a map, go to www.wildnh.com/maps, click on Topo Maps, and click on a town name. A small map of the town will come up, with red lines and labels to show each available PDF topo map. Below the small map is a list of map names keyed to the labels shown. Click on the name of the map you want to download.

Each PDF map is less than 500 KB in size for fast downloading, and may be opened with Adobe Reader version 8 or newer. Each topo map represents a quarter of a U.S. Geological Survey “quad” map; 851 of these “quarter-quads” cover the 259 towns and unincorporated places of New Hampshire, and each is available as a topo (showing land contours) or with a photographic background.

The background scanned images of U.S. Geological Survey paper topographic maps are from the National Geographic Society provided through ArcGIS Online, a map service with land cover imagery for the world and detailed topographic maps for the United States at multiple scales. The photography (2009) is from the National Agriculture Imagery Program. The other data layers are from NH GRANIT, the statewide geographic information system clearinghouse.

The New Hampshire Fish and Game Department works to conserve, manage and protect the state’s fish and wildlife and their habitats, as well as providing the public with opportunities to use and appreciate these resources."
 
Interesting!

Using This Map Segment of the N. Presi's as an example, it appears that GPS data for the trails has been overlayed onto the original NGS trail locations. I am making an assumption as this is not indicated in the map legend.
 
Interesting!

Using This Map Segment of the N. Presi's as an example, it appears that GPS data for the trails has been overlayed onto the original NGS trail locations. I am making an assumption as this is not indicated in the map legend.

Yep, that's one of the data layers referenced in my thread from last fall at Updated WMNF GIS Data Layers.
 
it appears that GPS data for the trails has been overlayed
Yes, based on a number of samples I checked out. Seems like a great step forward and I'm appreciative!

So. I'm used to working on my computer with the USGS quad scans, but I'd love to use the more up-to-date trail plotting here. Can anybody help me out with using these new maps?

1. To calibrate these maps I guess we're talking the same projection as the USGS quads they're copies of, Transverse Mercator, and with the Conus 1927 datum?

2. I guess we then have to get the UTM zone (number and letter) for the quad the map is a part of?

3. The original quad rotation looks like it's been distorted, straightened out? Is getting them re-rotated properly going to be trial and error or is there anywhere the angle of rotation for each original USGS quad is listed? Or would it be close enough to re-rotate ALL these maps a fixed 1/4 degree or whatever I find by trial and error?

4. Then I guess I have to strip off all the collars and butt them together in photoshop or something to recreate the original quad, albeit now fuzzy.

Then I wind up, after all that, with the good trail data I want, but plotted on fuzzy copies of the USGS quads. I guess I've talked myself out of it.

So I'll repeat a question I've asked in many forums: Is there any way to get hold of the actual recent AMC trail tracks, the data points (with identified datum), so I can plot them directly (or batch process them first to match the quads' background projection and 1927 Conus datum if needed) onto the original high quality but sometimes trail-incorrect USGS quads??? And enter them into a GPS?

I don't think we need new maps, we just need the trail data. This seems so simple to me. I obviously don't understand the secrecy. Is the AMC making a scatload of money from hiding the data? Or who is it that owns the data? F&G? Do we have any rights to the data as AMC members and taxpayers?
 
I don't think we need new maps, we just need the trail data. This seems so simple to me. I obviously don't understand the secrecy. Is the AMC making a scatload of money from hiding the data? Or who is it that owns the data? F&G? Do we have any rights to the data as AMC members and taxpayers?

I am not sure how much money the AMC makes from their maps, but I doubt that they are going make their digital trails data freely available any time soon, as they paid for the mapping, not NHF&G, USFS, USGS, or taxpayers.
 
I doubt that they [the AMC] are going make their digital trails data freely available any time soon, as they paid for the mapping, not NHF&G, USFS, USGS, or taxpayers.
Yeah, my question was really a juvenile, asshatish rhetorical rant. As is this message.

I've been an AMC member and additional contributor, with a couple of brief gaps, since the early 1970s.

But they have become, fundamentally, the enemy. In a lifetime of spending money wastefully and enjoyably, I have very few regrets; but the modest dollars I have put into this institution that has absolutely zero interest in its members' benefit will task me to my grave.

I have often entertained the notion of, finally, funding and recruiting funding for a new organization devoted to trail maintenance and information services to hikers in the Whites. Period. Let the AMC do what they now do best, fritter away their rightfully revered history and tradition into entropy, irrelevance and eventual oblivion.
 
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Is there any way to get hold of the actual recent AMC trail tracks, the data points (with identified datum), so I can plot them directly (or batch process them first to match the quads' background projection and 1927 Conus datum if needed) onto the original high quality but sometimes trail-incorrect USGS quads??? And enter them into a GPS?

You can't get the "original high quality . . . USGS quads" onto a GPS receiver. GPS receivers deal only with vector data, not the digital raster graphics that are used to (re)produce the original USGS topo sheets. What you can do is transfer the WMNF trails layer onto a GPS receiver that is already equipped with topo maps. All the metadata about the trails layer are available with the layer at GRANIT.

You'll need to convert the trails data layer first to a format that the receiver will accept. As a Mac user, I use Mac GPS Pro for that. If you're a Windoze user, I'd look at ExpertGPS and its ilk.

As for the rest of your questions, they're too numerous and too detailed for this forum, IMO.
 
It's not nice to complain about something you get for free, but I'm not sure this was a good use of tax dollars. It is quite inferior to free commercial products such as Acme Mapper.

By using fixed 8.5x11 sheets, F&G has far more edge problems than traditional quads while AM allows you to center a map anywhere. AM also allows you to zoom, scroll to adjacent maps, and tab between topo and satellite while F&G has a clunky 80s interface to fixed pages.

If the WMNF trail locations were accurate, that would be a plus but they still show the bogus trail to Mt Davis for example:
http://maps.wildlife.state.nh.us/website/maps/Topos/topo_056NW.pdf
 
You can't get the "original high quality . . . USGS quads" onto a GPS receiver
Wasn't saying I do that, though I phrased it unclearly. All the prep work with the USGS quads as background I do prior to the trip on my computer. In the end, only the needed waypoints, routes and trail tracks go into the GPS with its already loaded background maps.

But, BTW, converting those graphic maps so they themselves can be loaded directly into a GPS is being done routinely all the time, by lots of users. I don't do it because it's complicated and I'm slow, and because the commercial and other available prepackaged GPS maps are adequate for me at that point, for the trip itself. Most of the tools to do this conversion are not written for the Mac, though they would run on Parallels or whatever, or if you bootcamp.

What you can do is transfer the WMNF trails layer onto a GPS receiver that is already equipped with topo maps. All the metadata about the trails layer are available ... You'll need to convert the trails data layer first to a format that the receiver will accept
I've been trying to do that off and on since your "Updated WMNF GIS Data Layers" thread on 11/12/2009 (Thanks! BTW) but I'm just not smart enough to get all that new trail track data isolated in a way usable by MacGPSpro (or just generally isolated as route or track files or series of waypoints).
 
Yeah, my question was really a juvenile, asshatish rhetorical rant. As is this message.

I've been an AMC member and additional contributor, with a couple of brief gaps, since the early 1970s.

But they have become, fundamentally, the enemy. In a lifetime of spending money wastefully and enjoyably, I have very few regrets; but the modest dollars I have put into this institution that has absolutely zero interest in its members' benefit will task me to my grave.

I have often entertained the notion of, finally, funding and recruiting funding for a new organization devoted to trail maintenance and information services to hikers in the Whites. Period. Let the AMC do what they now do best, fritter away their rightfully revered history and tradition into entropy, irrelevance and eventual oblivion.


Don't like the AMC? Why not support another similar organization? There are plenty out there. How about GMC, RMC, or Friends of this or that? Want to do trail work in the Whites? Then help the USFS maintain one of the trails that they maintain, or adopt at USFS trail in the Whites. I'm sure there are many organizations and places that would appreciate your support.
 
Yeah, my question was really a juvenile, asshatish rhetorical rant. As is this message.

I've been an AMC member and additional contributor, with a couple of brief gaps, since the early 1970s.

But they have become, fundamentally, the enemy. In a lifetime of spending money wastefully and enjoyably, I have very few regrets; but the modest dollars I have put into this institution that has absolutely zero interest in its members' benefit will task me to my grave.

I have often entertained the notion of, finally, funding and recruiting funding for a new organization devoted to trail maintenance and information services to hikers in the Whites. Period. Let the AMC do what they now do best, fritter away their rightfully revered history and tradition into entropy, irrelevance and eventual oblivion.

Your point isn't without some merit, put one of the things AMC, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, WWF & the other big guys do is lobby Washington. Without a voice in Washington, their would be no wilderness act. (Muir, Bob Marshall, G. Pinchot, Avery & the other leaders of the cause did die right? If they still live then we are in good hands, immortal hands but our voice will be heard.)

How many wind turbines would fit in 770,000 acres? How many southern slopes stripped of timber could generate solar power? Southern New England is running out of landfill space, since it's desiganted national land why not a national landfill? WM & Browning Ferris would be for it, (Trash to energy, do they need clean air over the Atlantic. - The midwest doesn't think we do:rolleyes:).

While we'd love to put wind farms & solar out in the dessert, I imagine the folks out there would rather have them built here. Next time oil gets to 147 a barrel, someday it will, plenty of people will look for alternatives. (It would be nice to be a bit pro-active but there is no money in that.)

Until Washington is fixed, (it's not a party thing both of the major parties have cronies & special interest they listen too & I don't want this to cross into politics) lobbying is a necessary evil. Those with a non-recreational plan for open spaces do have a voice in Washington. Fix that, & lobbying becomes less important.

If things go as expected on 11/2, big business may get a bigger voice.

Honestly Will, I do hear you & wish more of my money stayed local. (same with my taxes but that's another sad tale.)
 
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With the Online maps:

(I'm a luddite, I like paper maps when planning, I do few BW & the ADK's aren't the adventure they once were thanks to the www & focusing impact on "unmaintained trails. This is the only online place I go for extra info but I've been doing this a while:eek:)

If someone brings their smartphone or I-Pad (somebody will) and they have a signal (they would if calling for help because they are don't know whe) Could F&G tell them to browse the site, get the right info & walk their own butts out.

Obviously injured people need help but the infamous Tripyramid couple several years ago didn't know where they were going.

I suppose SAR may want to go get the clueless though before they are clueless & injured.
 
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