About 1

What is 1?

It's the new set of digital cartographic frameworks from The National Atlas of the United States of America^® at a scale of 1:1,000,000. We also include national images of elevation, land cover, and Landsat at 100-meter ground resolution.

How do I get 1?

Go to nationalatlas.gov and follow the path for Mapping Professionals to get 1 via file transfer protocol or to use 1 as a Web Service. Our Web Map Services and Web Feature Services comply with the latest specifications from the Open Geospatial Consortium.

How much do you charge for 1?

1 is provided on-line at no cost to the end user.

Why did you switch from two million- to one million-scale?

1 delivers more content and a greater level of detail. It allows us to harmonize authoritative small-scale base data from the United States with similar data from Canada and Mexico. 1 also delivers the United States contribution to the international Global Map effort.

Is the two million-scale data still available?

Yes, but 1 is replacing it. We don't plan to revise the two million-scale frameworks.

What's this Global Map edition of 1?

More than 100 national mapping organizations join together to produce consistent data of the world at one million-scale. 1 is the American contribution from the National Atlas to the international Global Map effort. The spatial data in all editions is the same, but data attributes in this edition conform to the latest Global Map data model and specification.

What file formats can we expect?

We introduced 1 in industry standard shapefile format. Geodatabase and GeoTIFF formats were introduced in April 2013. We are also considering making 1 available in other formats.

What do you mean by "networked hydrography?"

America's surface waters are being delivered in two ways; as a set of national shapefiles and as four fully networked regional file geodatabases that are built on the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) model. Like the NHD, 1 contains a flow network that allows for tracing water downstream or upstream. It also uses an addressing system based on reach codes and linear referencing you can use to link specific information such as discharge rates and water quality. Each Esri file geodatabase includes streams, waterbodies & wetlands, coastlines, and gaging stations.

Is 1 documented?

Sure it's documented and you can't download 1 from us without getting full, extensive metadata, too.

What's the map projection for 1?

The vector files you download are distributed in the EPSG:4326 projection. Our Web Map Services are also delivered in EPSG:4326 while our Web Feature Services are delivered in the EPSG:4269 map projection. Elevation, land cover, and Landsat images at 100-meter resolution are delivered in the Albers Equal-Area Conic map projection.

What's the plan for 1 Web Feature Services? Will you offer Web Coverage Services?

Our experimental Web Feature Service was launched in the spring of 2013. We will add more 1 map layers to this service and monitor its performance. We will develop Web Coverage Services if demand warrants.