Iowa DNR Interactive Mapping, Help Files
Recent Updates to the Interactive Mapping Website
June 2008
The 1950s historic air photography effort began supplying counties for use on the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer. 11 Iowa counties were added including: Allamakee, Benton, Clay, Clayton, Davis, Harrison, Jones, Osceola, Scott, Winneshiek and Wright. The 1930s historic air photography project continues add images as it nears completion with a total of 83 counties now available. Look for more historic photography updates to the
Basic Map in the near future.
January 2008
The Aggregate Planning IMS was added this month. This service is an attempt to provide Iowa DOT, County Planners and private industry information regarding aggregate source availability, and limiting factors to aggregate availability. Concerns regarding future availability and cost of aggregates for the building of new roads, and maintenance of existing roads, prompted members of the Iowa Highway Research Board to provide some of the funding for it's development. This IMS presents data compiled by the Iowa Geological Survey for decades, along with other data maintained by IDALS and IDOT. This IMS is in later stages of it's development and users can expect additional information to be added as well as the appearance of some layers to change over the next few months.
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Summer/Fall 2007
On the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer, the 1930s historic air photography effort added 22 more Iowa counties, including: Calhoun, Cherokee, Clay, Guthrie, Hancock, Harrison, Henry, Humboldt, Ida, Jasper, Keokuk, Louisa, Mitchell, Osceola, Pocahontas, Poweshiek, Ringgold, Shelby, Tama, Taylor, Van Buren, Woodbury, Wright. This brings the total counties with 1930s historic photography available to 77 counties. Look for more historic photography updates to the
Basic Map in the near future.
A new Service was added to the Interactive Mapping homepage this Fall, the Leaking Underground Storage Tanks (LUST) Sites map. This tool is desinged to help minimize situations where plastic water lines are installed in actual or simulated LUST sites in the State. Known LUST sites are shown with 1,000 ft buffers. This information is being used by those submitting applications for drinking water distribution systems to the Water Supply Section.
June 2007
We have just launched one of the most talked about DNR information-delivery tools, the Iowa DNR Water Web. Designed to bring to you one portal for retrieving all water-related data in the state of Iowa, this is the very first phase of this new interactive map, searchable database, and reporting website.
Read more and to start using this exciting new tool.
On the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer, the 1930s historic air photography data was expanded to 16 more Iowa counties, including: Adams, Buena Vista, Chickasaw, Des Moines, Dickinson, Fayette, Fremont, Grundy, Jasper, Kossuth, Lucas, Msdison, Mills, Palo Alto, Winnebago, and Winnishiek. This brings the total counties with 1930s historic photography available to 55 counties. Look for more historic photography updates to the
Basic Map in the near future.
May 2007
The Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer was moved to a new web server. This change might affect your ability to open the map, depending on your local browser settings. Please
adjust your pop-up blocker settings if you experience problems opening the Basic Map from the new location.
A new layer was added to the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer. The Dates of 1930s Air Photos layer is a series of points that corresponds to the dates of the photos used to create the Air Photography (Historic) 1930s imagery. The 1930s imagery is available for several counties in the Basic Map. As you zoom in on the map, notice that each point is labelled with a date. Overlay this layer on the 1930s imagery and find out when each historic photo was taken. As more historic photos are added to the Basic Map, this point layer will also be updated.
A new interactive map is now available to the public. The Iowa Anaerobic Digester Asset Mapping Tool was designed to assist the IDNR and its partners with the identification of Iowa sites that have large quantities of co-digestible feedstocks as well as industries that are large energy users.
Read more and to start using this new tool.
On the Basic Map, 1930s historic air photography data was expanded to 1 more Iowa county, Montgomery. This brings the total counties with 1930s historic photography available to 39 counties. Look for more historic photography updates to the
Basic Map in the near future.
April 2007
On the Recreation Map several data changes were made. First, just in time for Iowa canoeing season, a new Water Trail layer was added, showing detailed canoe routes along many of Iowa's rivers. Zoom in to a Water Trail to see the distance in miles between boat access points for each segment. Second, the Boat Access layer was updated with several more point locations. Make the Boat Access layer active by selecting the small round radio button next to the layer name in the Legend, and then select the Identify tool in the Toolbar to select a boat access symbol on the map. A resulting row of data about the selected boat access location will appear above the map. Finally, a new Museum layer was added to the Service / Business folder in the Legend. This data was provided through a cooperative effort with the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. Open the Recreation Map to view this newly updated information.
On the Basic Map, 1930s historic air photography data was expanded to 4 more Iowa counties, including: Butler, Crawford, Delaware, and Page. This brings the total counties with 1930s historic photography available to 38 counties. Look for more historic photography updates to the Basic Map in the near future.
March 2007
Several changes were made on the functionality and data content of the following interactive mapping applications: AFO Siting Atlas, Livestock Burial Zones, Water Monitoring Atlas, and Watershed Atlas. In the AFO and Livestock maps, the Toolbar was updated with a new pick map scale and a different legal tool, similar to the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer map. For data changes, the Confined Feeding Operation and Open Feedlot layers were updated with more accurate locations, and the symbols for these facilities are now sized by number of animal units. The symbology on reference data, like River, County, Township, and Section, was changed a little to look more like the Recreation and Basic interactive maps.
March 2007
The Recreation Map was updated with a new layer. The Iowa Scenic Byway layer was added to the new Trails folder in the Legend. This layer represents all the state listed scenic byways. The name of each road stretch can be discovered by selecting the Identify tool in the Toolbar and then clicking the byway road feature on the map. Open the Recreation Map to view the new data layer.
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December 2006
A new tool was added to the Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer. The ability to retrieve X and Y map coordinates is now available through the new XY tool in the Toolbar. This functionality is also available in the Water Monitoring and Watershed Atlas maps. A new one-page quick help document on how to use the Basic Map was also added to this website. The document is saved as a PDF file to make it easy for you to save and print. In addition to these Basic Map updates, other minor visual design changes were made to most of the applications on the Iowa DNR Interactive Mapping Website.
Also on the Basic Map, 1930s historic air photography data was expanded to 10 more Iowa counties, including: Adair, Buchanan, Cass, Decatur, Emmet, Floyd, Mahaska, Muscatine, Pottawattamie, and Sioux. Look for more 1930s data updates to the Basic Map in the near future.
November 2006
Several data updates were made to some of our interactive maps. The Recreational Trails layer was added to the Recreation Map, which includes some of the state's bike trails, snowmobile trails, horseback riding trails, etc.. Use the Identify tool on a Recreational Trail feature to retrieve attributes about a trail.
Agriculture-related data was updated on the Watershed Atlas and Water Monitoring interactive maps. The Animal Feeding Operation and Manure Management Plan layers were replaced by the new Confined Feeding Operation and Open Feedlot layers. Click on the layer name in the Legend of the interactive map to view each layer's metadata (the information about the dataset, i.e. description, date created, attribute definition, etc.).
A new soil types layer was also added to the Watershed Atlas and Water Monitoring Atlas. Soil (ICSS with ISPAID) layer was added to supplement the existing Soil (SSURGO with ISPAID) layer. In the future, the entire state will be covered with just the Soil (SSURGO with ISPAID) layer. However, a few counties do not have current SSURGO data. Those missing counties are filled in with the Soil (ICSS with ISPAID) layer, which is soil type data similar to SSURGO but not from the same original source. The "with ISPAID" simply means that we have attached the soil polygons to the ISPAID data (link to PDF).
Some functional changes were also made on the Watershed Atlas and Water Monitoring Atlas interactive maps. A new tool for dynamically retrieving XY map coordinates was added to the Toolbar. Other small changes include: dropdown map scale tool replaces the enter scale tool, default text in Information Bar is different, and change in the order of tools in Toolbar.
October 2006
Now publicly available is the Iowa Natural Areas Inventory (INAI) Interactive Website. Over the last year the DNR has been working on restructuring the INAI Database and building a linked GIS/Web application. This new product improves the usability of threatened, endangered, special concern
, and selected rare species data, and now it is available for public query. Please note that the new INAI application replaces the Based on comments from the Interactive Mapping user community, three interactive maps have been updated with new data and functionality. The Basic Map and Air Photography Viewer site has new LiDAR sample data available. New map tools have also been added to the Basic Map site, including: pan arrows, allowing you to click a directional arrow and pan the map, bookmark map tool, allowing you to save a map and revisit again, and calculate acres tool, which is now part of the measure tool with the area value enhancement. Also check out the Water Monitoring Atlas and the Watershed Atlas for similar changes.
