March 09, 2009 -- The U.S. Geological Survey ( www.usgs.gov ) continues to make accessible a growing number of federal, state, and local government map services at the Geospatial One Stop ( www.geodata.gov ). Map services can be used with a variety of desktop mapping and viewing clients such as Google Earth, ESRI ArcGIS Explorer, Microsoft Virtual Earth, NASA's World Wind and other Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant viewers such as GAIA ( www.thecarbonproject.com). GOS search tools identify relevant map services based on either subject matter or geographic extent and can then be combined with local map services and data content. The wealth of geospatial resources registered with GOS is now available to be leveraged in Federal, State, and Local Government agencies.

New enhancements to the Geospatial One-Stop Version 2.3 include features such as a redesigned "Maps" tab with expanded ready-to-use maps, search results which can be exposed to external applications such as RSS Readers, HTML pages and KML readers such as ESRI ArcGIS Explorer and Google Earth, and integration with a FGDC Map Service Status Checker which indicates whether or not a map service listed in a search result is available and can be displayed in the GOS viewer. (The service availability icon is analogous to the signal strength indicator on a cell phone).

GOS now includes a special search filter that allows for searching content related to the Interagency Working Group on Ocean and Coastal Mapping, as well as to the State GIS Inventory (aka RAMONA). Also new is the capability to perform searches in GOS from external Web applications using a REST API. The new REST API allows users to issue a simple URL string request to GOS and receive responses in any of three formats: GeoRSS, KML, or HTML. Information new GOS 2.3 features are outlined in the "What's New in Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) Version 2.3" documentation under the Help Center tab on the GOS homepage at www.geodata.gov.

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CONTACT:
Robert Dollison,
Project Manager, U.S. Geological Survey,
Geospatial One Stop Project Office,
12201 Sunrise Valley Drive,
Reston, VA
(703) 648-5724,
Email Contact