How are other Federal agencies using SDTS?

Examples of the files TerraBase II will accept are: USGS SDTS 10 meter DEM, Commercial, USGS and and British GeoTIF imagery, USGS Digital Raster Graphics, USGS Digital Line Graphs, US Census Bureau TIGER files, UK Operations Survey DEM, Alberta Provincial DEM, NIMA Arc Digitized Raster Graphics (ADRG), Compressed Arc Digitized Raster Graphics (CADRG), and Compressed Digitized Raster Graphics (CDRG).

The Maneuver Support Center provides TerraBase II as an easy to use, PC based terrain evaluation tool for the engineer force. This software is used in training engineers as terrain visualization experts at the Maneuver Support Center. TerraBase II can display 2D views of digital elevation data in a wide variety of ways to include: elevation tints, slope/cant plots, reflectance plots and contours. It can also create custom 2D views of digital maps and imagery data. The custom 2D displays of elevation data, maps and imagery can be viewed as 3D Perspective, 3D Oblique Views or as 3D movie fly throughs.

Download Tb2_ setup.exe (Version 3.0 Beta 10) from the Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri web site.

The Corps Waterways Experiment Station has a CD of wetlands data, with Metadata, in SDTS format.

The Corps has included SDTS translation in the GRASS software. SDTS-related information and software can be downloaded from the GRASS FTP site (ftp 129.229.103.1/pub/grass/outgoing/SDTS). The sdts.README, sdts.r2.tar.Z, sdts_dsets.tar.Z and sdts_uguide.ps files are all available. Note that these programs are for vector data transfer only.

GRASS software may be downloaded from the GRASS FTP site (ftp 129.229.103.1/pub/grass/).

The Census Bureau is capable of providing additional counties from the 1990 Census version of the TIGER data base on request at a cost-reimbursable basis of $150 per partition (Census Bureau partitions approximate counties).

When resources become available the Census Bureau plans to simplify the prototype design based on feedback from the users. The Census Bureau hopes the new version of the TIGER/ SDTS files will be available in conjunction with the release of Census 2000 data products.

NGS's geodetic data will be used to prototype the procedures. These data are regarded by the FGDC as critical in that they provide a framework for most of the nation's mapping needs. The SDTS-formatted geodetic data will be available on CD-ROM with some samples posted on the World Wide Web.

In addition, the procedures will be generalized to port other NOAA point data sets into SDTS format. The resulting SDTS-formatted NGS datasets will allow research scientists to easily create high-precision GIS layers that can be used for quick evaluation and decision-making.

For more information also see: NGDC at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ and NGS at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/

Or for a dynamic retrieval of data sheets from NGS database see: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/products_services.html

Visit the "SDTS in Brief" webpage at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/tools/sdts/brief.html