Forest Inventory and Analysis National Program

FIA Library

Maps
 

Forest Types of the United States As a part of the 1997 Resource Planning Act Assessment, FIA collaborated with the US Geological Survey to update the 'Forest Types of the United States" map last published in 1993.  This new map shows the forests of the United States grouped into 27 major forest types.  The map includes Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, all mapped at the same 1:7,500,000 scale, Albers equal area projection.  Various versions of the map are available including:
 

• Full view of the finished map, in GIF format (48 K).   This version of the map is simply a small graphic file suitable for inclusion in a report, but with minimal detail visible and no real analytical uses.
  
  
• Full view of the finished map, in Acrobat (.PDF) format (3.9 M).  This version of the map is a high resolution .PDF file which includes the full map (including key and scale).  It can be zoomed in to read the fine detail, and can be printed at full scale (36" x 40"), or print at 25% size to fit on a standard 8.5 x 11 page.
  
  
• Forest Type coverage in GEOTIFF format (1.8 M).  This version of the map is a unified image of forest cover for all 50 states + Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, in Lambert Azimuthal equal-area projection centered at (-100,45).   This is all the forest data in one large georeferenced image with no relief shading or map collar.  This version is suitable for further analysis using image processing or GIS tools.  The file is compressed (tar format); decompressed size is over 75 M.

Metadata for this map are available at http://www.nationalatlas.gov/fortypem.html

This map, along with many other useful map layers, are available electronically at the US National Atlas, an outstanding online resource for US mapped information.  Paper copies of this and other maps are also available through the US National Atlas.