Layer Information

For detailed documentation, click on the layer name in the layer list of the interactive map. This action opens a window that provides layer details and a link to open the full metadata record.

The following data sets were generated for the FRIRP as base cartographic layers. The data sets contain the project's forty-five 1:24,000-scale, 7.5-minute quadrangles included in the demonstration area that covers the Front Range of Colorado, south from Ft. Collins to the southern portion of the Denver metropolitan area (not including Highlands Ranch in Douglas County), and west from Denver International Airport to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountain Front Range.

Railroads
Roads and Highways
Miscellaneous Transportation
Man-made Structures
Hydrography
Cities and Boundaries
Study Area
Public Land Survey System

Oil and Gas

Oil and Gas Wells:
The 2003 oil and gas well-location digital data layer was created by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC). It is the COGCC’s intention to daily update the well location shapefile to reflect any new information provided by Colorado’s oil and gas operators. There are about 57,000 well locations in the shapefile.

Potential Areas of Future Oil and Gas Development:
The potential for oil and gas development in the greater Wattenberg area, which lies near the Front Range between Denver and Greeley, Colo. in the Denver Basin, is moderate to high for oil- and gas-producing formations of Cretaceous age. The potential for development was determined by modeling existing production of oil and gas from these strata and evaluating where the remaining volume of hydrocarbons exceeds estimates of ultimate recovery from existing producing wells.

Counties:
This is a coverage of the county boundaries of the conterminous United States (Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico are available separately). The lines were extracted from U.S. Census TIGER/line files using an Arc Macro Language (AML) program, written by Doug Nebert and Mark Negri (1993), running on two Data General 6220 servers.

Saline Soils Photo Tour:
Saline soils are widespread in parts of the Front Range area, north of the city of Denver. Farmers and ranchers commonly call these "alkali" soils, and they are particularly visible as white patches in fields along highway I-25, north of the Denver suburbs toward Fort Collins, in spring and early summer. The photo tour provides links to photographs with short descriptions of the saline soils and their affects on the environment.

Coal:
These files were created to provide information pertaining to energy resource issues within the Colorado Front Range urban corridor, in and near the Denver metro area. Energy resource issues within the FRIRP area include the impacts of historic coal mining, particularly in regard to the potential for subsidence over abandoned mines in recently developed areas or in areas currently being evaluated as residential, commercial, and (or) industrial building sites. The primary purpose for compiling the Boulder-Weld coal field coverages is to provide the public and land-use planners with some basic digital data necessary for an initial GIS assessment of areas impacted by coal mining. The layers in this group include:

Vertical Shafts
Adits
Airshafts
Faults
Depth to Mining
Extent of Mined-Out Areas

Geohydrology of Shallow Aquifers:
One goal of the FRIRP is to provide information on the availability of those hydrogeologic resources that are either critical to maintaining infrastructure along the northern Front Range or that may become less available because of urban expansion. These data sets are divided into a northern and a southern FRIRP, bounded on the west by the approximate rise of the Front Range, and on the east by an arbitrary north-south line extending through a point about 4 miles east of Greeley. The northern data sets extend from the Boulder-Jefferson County line on the south to the middle of Larimer and Weld Counties on the north. The southern data sets were created by the USGS in the development of the report: Geohydrology of the shallow aquifers in the Denver metropolitan area, Colorado, U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Investigations Atlas HA-736 (Robson, 1996).

Depth to Water:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of depth-to-water (unsaturated-zone thickness) contours that were generated from hydrogeologic data using GIS software.

Water Table Altitude:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of digitized water-level-altitude contours.

Bedrock Surface Altitude:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of bedrock-surface-altitude contours that were generated using GIS software.

Unconsolidated-Sediment Thickness:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of digitized contours of unconsolidated-sediment thickness (depth-to-bedrock).

Saturated Thickness:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of saturated-zone thickness polygons that were generated using GIS software.

Bedrock Outcrop:
These digital geospatial data sets consist of digitized bedrock-outcrop outlines that were manually drawn at a contour interval of 20 ft.

Bedrock Aquifers:

The USGS developed these data sets as part of a project described in the report: Structure, outcrop, and subcrop of the bedrock aquifers along the western margin of the Denver Basin, Colorado, U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Investigations Atlas HA-742 (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Structure contours of the base of upper Arapahoe aquifer:

This data set was created to display the altitude of the base of the upper Arapahoe aquifer (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Structure contours of the top of Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer:

This data set was created to display the altitude at the top of the Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Structure contours of the base of the Laramie-Fox Hills and Arapahoe aquifers:

This data set was created to display the altitude of the base of the Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer and the Arapahoe aquifer (Robson and others, 1988).

 

Wells:

This data set was created to display well locations used to map the bedrock aquifer structure along the Front Range of Colorado (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Geohydrologic unit boundaries:

This data set was created to display bedrock geologic units along the Front Range of Colorado (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Bedrock Aquifers Study Area:

This data set was created to display the outline of the FRIRP study area (Robson and others, 1998).

 

Geology:

Two digital maps are provided to cover the northern and southern portions of the Front Range Urban Corridor.

Geologic Structure:
This digital geospatial data set consists of points and lines representing symbolization of geologic structure information for the Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills aquifers. The symbols were developed as part of the report: Structure, outcrop, and subcrop of the bedrock aquifers along the western margin of the Denver Basin, Colorado, U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologic Investigations Atlas HA-742 (Robson and others, 1998).

Linear Features and Surface Geology (north):
This digital map shows the distribution of rock-stratigraphic units (formations) that was compiled by R.B. Colton in 1976 as part of the Front Range Urban Corridor Geology Program. The map is based on Colton's own geologic mapping, as well as previously published geologic maps, and was prepared to provide a regional map having a single classification of geologic units. The resulting colored map: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Investigations Series I-855-G (Colton, 1978) was also intended as an important aid in land-use planning.

Linear Features and Surface Geology (south):
This digital map shows the areal extent of surficial deposits and rock-stratigraphic units (formations) as compiled by D.E. Trimble and M.N. Machette from 1973 to 1977 under the Front Range Urban Corridor Geology Program. Their map (Trimble and Machette, 1979) was compiled from both published and unpublished sources having varied map unit schemes; a convenient feature is a uniform classification of geologic units that mostly matches those of companion maps to the north (Colton, 1978) and to the south (Trimble and Machette, 1979). The Trimble and Machette map was also intended to assist in land-use planning in the Front Range Urban Corridor.

Sand, Gravel, and Quarry Aggregate Resources:
This group contains a digital version of aggregate resources information originally published by the Colorado Geological Survey as Special Publications 5A and 5B by Schwochow, Shroba, and Wicklein (1974). The original atlas information was published as 212 individual quadrangles; however, this data set has been paneled. The data set covers an area extending from the Wyoming-Colorado state line southward along the Front Range to Pueblo, Colo., and from the foothills west of Denver and Colorado Springs to approximately the eastern edges of Weld, Douglas, El Paso, and Pueblo counties. The layers in this group include:

Sample Sites
Aggregate Mineability

Land Use and Land Cover:
These land-use and land-cover (LULC) data sets span the forty-five 1:24,000-scale, 7.5-minute quadrangles included in the demonstration area that covers the Front Range of Colorado south from Ft. Collins to the southern portion of the Denver metropolitan area (not including Highlands Ranch in Douglas County), and west from Denver International Airport to the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountain Front Range. The layers in this group include four temporal time shots — 1930s, 1950s, 1970s and 1990s — of the project's demonstration area. These data sets provide information about the changing landscape of the Front Range, the impact of urbanization and other land uses on various resources, and can be used to model potential future growth in the demonstration area.

World Street Map:
The street map was developed by ESRI using ESRI basemap data, DeLorme base map layers, AND road data, USGS elevation data, UNEP-WCMC parks and protected areas for the world, Tele Atlas Dynamap® and Multinet® street data for North America and Europe, and First American parcel data for the United States. For more information on this map, visit ESRI online at http://goto.arcgisonline.com/maps/World_Street_Map. This worldwide street map presents highway-level data for the world and street-level data for the United States, Canada, Japan, Southern Africa, most countries in Europe, and several other countries. This comprehensive street map includes highways, major roads, minor roads, one-way arrow indicators, railways, water features, administrative boundaries, cities, parks, and landmarks, overlaid on shaded relief imagery for added context. The map also includes building footprints for selected areas in the United States and Europe and parcel boundaries for much of the lower 48 states (ESRI, 2011).

 

Topography:
These georeferenced images provide digital topographic data of the Earth's land surface along the Front Range of Colorado. The source data include Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data points located every 1-arc second (approximately 100 ft) on a latitude/longitude grid.  The absolute vertical accuracy of the elevation data is 52 ft (at 90 percent confidence).  More detailed imagery created from 1:24,000-scale Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data are available within the forty-five 1:24,000-scale, 7.5-minute quadrangle demonstration area. Also included are the shaded relief layers used in the U.S. Geological Survey National Map, http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm.