National Collaboration Efforts on Federal Trail Data and Tools

Webinar Outline

Our Nation is home to thousands of miles of trails maintained by many different land management agencies and organizations. In 2018, using the Federal Trail Data Standard as the foundation, a grass roots working group established the Federal Trail GIS Schema (FTGS). The FTGS allows for national aggregation of publicly facing trail data from multiple agencies and partners into a common Geographic Information System (GIS) database schema. Since 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Digital Trails project has been improving access to our nation’s public lands. The first objective was to improve connectivity between existing trails and trail networks by developing a trail planning support tool for assisting land managers in identifying and prioritizing candidate trails. Secondly, the project was tasked with the creation of a nationwide, public domain, geospatial trail dataset. In 2022, the Modernizing Access to our Public Land Act, or the MAPLand Act (Public Law No:117-114), directed the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to jointly develop interagency standards to ensure compatibility and interoperability among federal databases for the collection and dissemination of outdoor recreation data, including trails, on federal lands to the public. This presentation will introduce interoperable trail spatial data standards, MAPLand Act efforts, as well as provide updates on the USGS trail data and tools.

Learning Objectives:

• Overview of Federal Trail Data Standards.
• Overview of MAPLand Act efforts.
• Overview of the USGS National Digital Trails (NDT) project.
• How you or your organization can help build the nationwide trails dataset.

Trail Competencies

• Project Planning and Design
• • Corridor Planning
• • Trail Inventory and Assessment

Relevant Trail Types

General. All trail types are relevant.