Description: The political boundary datalayer is a polygon representation of town boundaries created from arcs developed from survey coordinates extracted from the 68-volume Harbor and Lands Commission Town Boundary Atlas for the 351 communities (cities and towns) in Massachusetts. The Atlas was published in the early 1900's and is maintained by the Survey Section of Massachusetts Highway Department. For communities with a coastal boundary, MassGIS has collaborated with Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and the Department of Environmental Protection to complete a 1:12000 scale coastline. The boundary for the coastline was defined as being the upland side of tidal flats and rocky inter-tidal zones. Note that the 351 communities are the official municipal names, not including "villages" or other sections of towns.
Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P><SPAN>MxxxOthLeg contains polygons representing other “invisible” legal boundaries such as easements or private rights-of-way that overlap tax parcels.There may be few or even no features in this layer and it is required only if such boundaries are shown on the original assessors map. </SPAN><SPAN>Only Entity Attributes are listed in this metadata. </SPAN><SPAN>Please see the TaxPar feature class (or MxxxTaxPar.shp) for all other information.</SPAN></P><P><SPAN /></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
Copyright Text: Please see the TaxPar feature class (or MxxxTaxPar.shp) for all other information.
Description: The TIGER/Line Files are shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation. Census tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity, and were defined by local participants as part of the 2010 Census Participant Statistical Areas Program. The Census Bureau delineated the census tracts in situations where no local participant existed or where all the potential participants declined to participate. The primary purpose of census tracts is to provide a stable set of geographic units for the presentation of census data and comparison back to previous decennial censuses. Census tracts generally have a population size between 1,200 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size of 4,000 people. When first delineated, census tracts were designed to be homogeneous with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions. The spatial size of census tracts varies widely depending on the density of settlement. Physical changes in street patterns caused by highway construction, new development, and so forth, may require boundary revisions. In addition, census tracts occasionally are split due to population growth, or combined as a result of substantial population decline. Census tract boundaries generally follow visible and identifiable features. They may follow legal boundaries such as minor civil division (MCD) or incorporated place boundaries in some States and situations to allow for census tract-to-governmental unit relationships where the governmental boundaries tend to remain unchanged between censuses. State and county boundaries always are census tract boundaries in the standard census geographic hierarchy. In a few rare instances, a census tract may consist of noncontiguous areas. These noncontiguous areas may occur where the census tracts are coextensive with all or parts of legal entities that are themselves noncontiguous. For the 2010 Census, the census tract code range of 9400 through 9499 was enforced for census tracts that include a majority American Indian population according to Census 2000 data and/or their area was primarily covered by federally recognized American Indian reservations and/or off-reservation trust lands; the code range 9800 through 9899 was enforced for those census tracts that contained little or no population and represented a relatively large special land use area such as a National Park, military installation, or a business/industrial park; and the code range 9900 through 9998 was enforced for those census tracts that contained only water area, no land area.
Copyright Text: The source data for the 2010 polygon geography for the statewide files in Massachusetts are curently located on the U.S. Census Web site here:
ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/pvs/tiger2010st/25_Massachusetts/25/
Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P><SPAN>MassGIS' Level 3 Assessors’ Parcel Mapping data set was developed through a competitive procurement funded by MassGIS. Each community in the Commonwealth was bid on by one or more vendors and the unit of work awarded was a city or town. The specification for this work was Level 3 of the MassGIS </SPAN><A href="http://www.mass.gov/anf/research-and-tech/it-serv-and-support/application-serv/office-of-geographic-information-massgis/standards/standard-parcels.html"><SPAN>Digital Parcel Standard</SPAN></A><SPAN>. Standardization of assessor parcel mapping is complete for 350 of Massachusetts' 351 cities and towns. (Boston, which is not part of this project, is being processed separately). MassGIS is now incorporating updates from municipalities into the database.</SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
Copyright Text: Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Geographic Information (MassGIS)
Value: X500 Label: Zone X (500-year) - 500-year flooding, 100-year flooding with average depths of less than 1 foot or drainage area less than 1 square mile Description: N/A Symbol:
Description: This datalayer contains points for all vernal pools that have been certified by the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP) according to the Guidelines for Certification of Vernal Pool Habitat (MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, 2000). Vernal pools are small, shallow ponds characterized by lack of fish and by periods of dryness. Vernal pool habitat is extremely important to a variety of wildlife species including some amphibians that breed exclusively in vernal pools, and other organisms such as fairy shrimp, which spend their entire life cycles confined to vernal pool habitat. Many additional wildlife species utilize vernal pools for breeding, feeding and other important functions. Certified vernal pools are protected if they fall under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Wetlands Protection Act Regulations (310 CMR 10.00). However, the certification of a pool only establishes that it functions biologically as a vernal pool. Certification does not determine that the pool is within a resource area protected by the Wetlands Protection Act. Certified vernal pools are also afforded protection under the state Water Quality Certification regulations (401 Program), the state Title 5 regulations, and the Forest Cutting Practices Act regulations. The Certified Vernal Pools layer is stored in ArcSDE as CVP_PT. Occurrence records of Certified Vernal Pools from the NHESP database are continuously being added and modified. Those changes will be incorporated into the Certified Vernal Pools datalayer twice annually, in the months of January and July. Questions about the creation of this datalayer should be directed to NHESP at 508-389-6375. For questions relating to the certification of Vernal Pools, please call 508-389-6365.
Copyright Text: Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP), MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife