Section 1	Identification Information
Originator	United States Geological Survey and Land Management Information Center, Minnesota Planning
Title	Geographic Names Information System (USGS) for the Lake Superior Basin in GIS Format
Abstract	The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the United States Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, provides primary information on location of all known places, features, and areas in the United States which are identified by a proper name. Specifically, information on this file is from the National Geographic Names Data Base, which contains names of all places, features, and areas which appear on the USGS 7.5-minute quadrangle map series. The Land Management Information Center has converted a subset of the information in the original USGS ASCII files into an Arc/INFO point coverage. This consituted only of of four of the needed pieces. After this data was assembled, it was clipped with the 50 km buffered basin boundary, and then split into counties on the US side. On the Canada side, the data was left whole. This was done to provide easier access for downloading the data sets.
Purpose	The GNIS is part of a set of digital cartographi/geographic data files produced by the United States Geological Survey as part of the National Mapping Program. The Land Management Information Center created the GIS version of the file to provide a source of information for digital cartographic labeling.
Time Period of Content Date	1990
Currentness Reference	Null
Progress	Complete
Maintenance and Update Frequency	None planned
Spatial Extent of Data	All states and provinces withing the Lake Superior Drainage Basin including: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada.
Bounding Coordinates	-97.293 -81.564 49.255 41.573
Place Keywords	Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, all county names
Theme Keywords	Geographic Names, Placenames, Features, Places, Areas
Theme Keyword Thesaurus
Access Constraints	None
Use Constraints	None
Contact Person Information	Gerald Sjerven, GIS Specialist Natural Resources Research Institute 5013 Miller Trunk Highway Duluth, MN 55811 Phone: (218)-720-4388 FAX: (218)-720-4328 E-mail: gsjerven@sage.nrri.umn.edu
Browse Graphic File Name	none available
Browse Graphic File Description
Associated Data Sets	Federal data sets within the Geographic Names Information System include: National Geographic Names Data Base (the source of this GIS coverage) USGS Topographic Names Bata Base Reference Data Base Board of Geographic Names Data Base USGS Digital Gazetteer Some of this information is available online at: http://www-nmd.usgs.gov/www/gnis/ Associated GIS Datasets include the USGS Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) representation of the quad map, Digital Line Graph data, etc.
Section 2	Data Quality Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Attribute Accuracy	Unknown
Logical Consistency	Unknown
Completeness	Contains all names of areal, linear, and point features appearing on USGS 7.5-minute topographic maps, with the exception that only the primary occurrence of each feature is contained on the GIS file. (See lineage for a description of what was extracted).
Horizontal Positional Accuracy	Point location is based upon the Latitude/Longitude reported on the USGS file, in degrees, minutes, and seconds. USGS reports that the Latitude/Longitude value of each point is accurate to plus or minus 5 seconds. If the point represents an areal feature such as a city, the primary point is generally located in the center of the area. The determination of 'center' was subjective. In other situations, the location of a major town feature such as the town hall was used to locate the point. Additional, secondary points might also be used to represent the same area, especially if it appeared on more than one quad map. For linear features such as rivers, the primary locator point is at the mouth of the river. Secondary points appear for that river on each quad map where it appears. In creating the GIS coverage, LMIC extracted only the primary location features.
Vertical Positional Accuracy	Elevation information is reported only if it is reported on the USGS 7.5-minute topographic map. Vertical positional accuracy reflects that of the National Mapping Program.
Lineage	In using the below coverage, the procedure is as follows: 1. The projection was changed to UTM on all of the point data statewide. 2. The coverage was completed by using the Lake Superior basin to clip out a part of the pre-existing coverage. The source data for the Lake Superior Basin GNIS GIS point file is the USGS-GNIS data base, 'National Geographic Names Database', which is an ascii text file. Procedures to create the point coverage were as follows: 1. Certain data elements were extracted from the original USGS table. Not all data fields from the original file were used. Latitude/Longitude values were converted to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), Zone 15. Minnesota standard county codes and 7.5-minute quadrangle codes were added to the file. 2. Secondary data points were weeded out of the data set. The USGS National Geographic Names Data Base contains multiple location points for areal and linear features. In the case of an areal feature, the primary data point is the one determined subjectively to be at the center of the feature, or the one describing the location of a prominent feature within an area, such as the town hall in a town. In the case of a linear feature, the original file would contain at least one point on every 7.5-minute quad where the feature is displayed. Where the linear feature is a river, the point representing the mouth of the river is defined as the primary feature. Secondary points would appear on all upstream quads. For the Minnesota GIS file, only the points representing primary features were extracted (i.e., one point per feature). (In practical terms, that means that there is no point representing the Mississippi or other border rivers which flow out of the state, and there is only one point representing the Minnesota River, the Cottonwood River, etc.) 3. The GIS point coverage was created. The UTM locations from the data table were used to generate an Arc/Info point cover. Attribute information was then moved over from the original table to the .PAT file. The GIS file was later converted from NAD27 to NAD83. Later, the MN, WI, and MI files were mapjoined together and converted from NAD83 to Albers. Data was then clipped with the 50 km lake superior basin boundary, and split into county coverages for the US side. It was left whole for the canadian side.
Source Scale Denominator	24000
Section 3	Spatial Data Organization Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Native Data Set Environment	Arc/Info 7.1.1
Geographic Reference for Tabular Data
Spatial Object Type	Point
Vendor Specific Object Types	Point
Tiling Scheme	State
Section 4	Spatial Reference Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Horizontal Coordinate Scheme	Geographic (Lat. Long.)
Ellipsoid	GRS1980
Horizontal Datum	NAD83
Horizontal Units	Meters
Distance Resolution	Meters
Altitude Datum	Not applicable
Depth Datum	Not applicable
Cell Width	0
Cell Height	0
Latitude Resolution	0
Longitude Resolution	0
UTM Zone Number	0
County Coordinate Zone Identifier	0
Coordinate Offsets or Adjustments	n/a
Map Projection Name	Albers Equal Area
Map Projection Parameters	Standard Parallel: 29.5 Standard Parallel: 45.5 Longitude Of Central Meridian: -96 Latitude Of Projection Origin: 23 False Easting: 0 False Northing: 0
Other Coordinate System's Definition	Planar Coordinate Encoding Method: Coordinate Pair Abscissa Resolution: 1 Ordinate Resolution: 1 Semi-Major Axis: 6378206.4 Denominator of Flattening Ratio: 294.98
Section 5	Entity and Attribute Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Entity and Attribute Overview	The GNIS Point Attribute table contains the following data fields: AREA PERIMETER BASINAME# BASINAME-ID FEATURE_NA FEATURE
Entity and Attribute Detailed Citation	US GeoData: Geographic Names Information System Data Users Guide (National Mapping Program Technical Instructions Data Users Guide 6) Department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey. Reston, Virginia, 1987.
Section 6	Distribution Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Publisher	Natural Resources Research Institute
Publication Date	Unpublished material
Contact Person Information	Gerald Sjerven, GIS Specialist Natural Resources Research Institute 5013 Miller Trunk Highway Duluth, MN 55811 Phone: (218)-720-4388 FAX: (218)-720-4328 E-mail: gsjerven@sage.nrri.umn.edu
Distributor's Data Set Identifier
Distribution Liability	No warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the accuracy or utility of the data on any other system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. This disclaimer applies both to individual use of the data and aggregate use with other data. It is strongly recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of the metadata file associated with these data. The University of Minnesota shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein.
Transfer Format Name	Arc/INFO export
Transfer Format Version Number
Transfer Size
Ordering Instructions	Contact above person
Online Linkage	Click here to download data. (See Ordering Instructions above for details.) By clicking here, you agree to the notice in "Distribution Liability" above.
Section 7	Metadata Reference Information - - - - - - Go back to top
Metadata Date	08/25/1999
Contact Person Information	Joel Nelson, GIS Intern Natural Resources Research Institute 5013 Miller Trunk Highway Duluth, MN 55811 Phone: (218)-720-4254 FAX: (218)-720-4328 E-mail: jnelson@sage.nrri.umn.edu
Metadata Standard Name	Minnesota Geographic Metadata Guidelines
Metadata Standard Version	2.01
Metadata Standard Online Linkage	http://www.lmic.state.mn.us/gc/stds/metadata.htm

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