NY Metro Database

Karen A. Mulcahy

This database consists of a digital elevation model and landuse/landcover data for the New York metropolitan area.

Digital Elevation Model


Two data sources were combined to produce the DEM.

The USGS 1 degree by 1 degree, 1:250,000 scale digital elevation models for the NY metro area were obtained via ftp from http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov.

The DEMs used were:

  • SCRANTON-W, SCRANTON-E
  • HARTFORD-W, HARTFORD-E
  • PROVIDENCE-W
  • NEWARK-W, NEWARK-E
  • WILMINGTON-W, WILMINGTON-E
  • NEW_YORK-W, NEW_YORK-E

    These were imported into ARC/INFO using the demlattice command after having record delimeters inserted using the UNIX command:
    dd if=inputfile of=outputfile ibs=4096 cbs=1024 conv=unblock
    A latticemerge was performed to create a seamless data layer and the entire grid data layer was projected into the UTM projection.

    Landuse/Landcover Data

    The landuse and landcover data source is the GIRAS data also provided by the USGS http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov. The actual datasets used were GIRAS datasets in ARC/INFO export format from the US EPA. These can be obtained from http://www.epa.gov.

    The GIRAS datasets used were:

  • SCRANTON
  • HARTFORD
  • PROVIDENCE
  • NEWARK
  • WILMINGTON
  • NEW_YORK

    The GIRAS data was uncompressed using gunzip and imported into ARC/INFO. Some editing of the data was performed to correct problems introduced by processing of the vector data. There will also be a mismatch along the seams of the GIRAS datasets. These are due to various data collection issues. To avoid additional vector data processing errors each GIRAS quad was converted to a grid format and then a latticemerge and projection transformation was performed.

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    http://everest.hunter.cuny.edu/terrain/ny_metro.html
    Last update: December, 1995