New Policy Regarding the Maintenance of Administrative Feature Names in the GNIS

Effective October 1, 2014: As a result of reprioritized budgets and resources, the decision has been made to suspend the maintenance of feature categories classified in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) as administrative (i.e., cultural or manmade).

However, a select number of administrative features will continue to be maintained by other USGS programs supporting The National Map. These features will be updated in GNIS on a periodic revision cycle. If you are interested in participating in the USGS National Map Corps program, which “encourages citizens to collect structures data by adding new features, removing obsolete points, and correcting existing data for The National Map database,” please visit the following web site: http://navigator.er.usgs.gov. To identify the administrative features to be maintained through The National Map Corps program, click Structures List, located on the left-hand side of the web page.

If you have further questions, please visit The National Map home page at: http://nationalmap.gov. Inquiries may be submitted to The National Map via the link at the bottom of the page.