The NABS geographic information system (GIS) catalog of natural arches
Arches are grouped by political subdivision, either the country or the US state in which they are located. For each political subdivision a list of the arches is provided along with a map. The lists, which order the arches from west to east, provide links to detailed documentation for each arch. Arch names are included in the list when available for ease of reference. Many arches remain unnamed and are so shown. Each map shows the locations of all the arches currently cataloged in that political subdivision. In some cases the map provided covers multiple subdivisions. The lists and maps have hyperlinks to each other. Thus, it is possible to link to documentation for an arch from the map as well as the list. Furthermore, all the functionality of Google Maps is available, e.g., zoom, pan, and obtaining directions from user specified locations. For some subdivisions downloadable .kml and .gpx files are available. The .kml files can be loaded and combined using Google Earth. The .gpx files can be directly loaded into most modern GPS receivers. Because this catalog has not been completed, most maps contain arches that are not included in the corresponding list, and some US states and many countries are not cataloged at all. Unfortunately, Google has fundamentally changed the user interface for their maps which makes it quite problematic to add to this work. Essentially, everything here would have to be revised before anything could be added, and there are currently no plans to do this. Comments are nevertheless welcome and should be sent to jwilbur@naturalarches.org.
|