Highlights: 1:250,000-Scale Quadrangle Map Series Viewer

Working in collaboration with Afghan counterparts, geographer Robert Bohannon and other members of the USGS Geospatial Infrastructure Development Project created a series of 4 maps—geologic, topographic, natural-color, and  false-color—for each of 50 quadrangles covering the entire country of Afghanistan.

The geologic and topographic maps were produced from several sources, including Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 85-meter digital data and digitized data from 1:200,000-scale Soviet General Staff Sheets (1978-1997). Natural- and false-color image maps were produced using Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imagery collected between 1999 and 2002. In all cases, cultural data were extracted from files downloaded from the Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS) that were originally derived from maps produced by the Afghanistan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office (AGCHO).

The map series are easily accessed via an interactive 1:250,000-scale quadrangle map series viewer developed by geographer Matt Cushing of the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. To view the series for any given quadrangle, simply click on the appropriate box and the four maps for that quadrangle appear in a carousel below the viewer. Within the carousel, click on a map’s title, and you’ll be taken to its source document, complete with detailed information and links to a low-resolution preview or high-resolution, downloadable version of the map itself.


   Go to the map viewer.


The maps in each series can also be accessed from the list of Geospatial Infrastructure Development Project publications in the Products section of this website.