 | Quadrangles: Find and Explore
The US Geological Service quadrangle maps for the lower 48 states were completed in 1992. These maps have been the basis for countless adventures across the United States. We are putting them into service once again as the survey unit for the Louisiana Bird Atlas. We have two ways to help you explore the state and find the quad that your favorite birding spot or a quad in an area that you would like to explore.
Hard copies
For hard copies of USGS quadrangle maps go to the USGS Store or their business partners page to find an outlet near you.The cost for a map is between $6 and $10.
USGS Store: http://store.usgs.gov/
USGS Business Partners: http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/acis-bin/choosebylocation.pl?statechoice=Louisiana
Online Options
For web users, we have two options. The first is Google Earth with an overlay of Louisiana quads. Mark Swan with the Nature Conservancy has put together a file to download from our website and upload into Google Earth. The other is the LSU CADGIS quad downloader.
Google Earth and The Nature Conservancy
First, go to www.earth.google.com and download Google Earth to your machine. Explore the application: find your house, the house you grew up in, your favorite vacation spot, etc. I spent the better part of two days slackjawed when I first downloaded it. Then download the Louisiana Quads file to your desktop or a folder of your choice. With the Google Earth window open, open the "File" heading in the top tool bar and then select "open" in the dropdown menu. Choose the Louisiana Quads file from the desktop or your selected folder.
There should be four layers in the "Places" window on the left side of the map window in the Louisiana Quads folder. Click the box and the quad boundaries will appear over Louisiana.
Clicking Louisiana Quads will turn on all four layers at once: A, B, C, and D.
To find the name of a quad, select the number in the middle of the quad for an information box to appear. You will need this name to enter data in the eBird application.
LSU CADGIS Center
You can also find the old style topo maps here:
http://atlas.lsu.edu/q24k/
Once you've located a quad, you can download a good map as a tiff file and then print that out (or save as pdf file and print that out -- resolution not as good but file size not huge, unlike tiff files).
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