Ontological Issues for National Topographic Mapping

The articles in this special section of Cartographica are the result of a meeting of invited specialists titled ‘‘Building an Ontology for The National Map,’’ held on 3–4 February 2009 in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science on behalf of the US Geological Survey (USGS), this meeting was intended to solicit ideas on the development of an ontology for the USGS’s National Map (TNM). Academic, industry, and government participants were selected based on reviewed position papers. Though the immediate aim of the workshop was to further the goals of TNM as a trusted, free, and responsive user tool, the workshop also aimed to benefit the broader geo-semantic research community.