What GroundLayers Does
GroundLayers synthesizes authoritative public geographic and environmental datasets from federal U.S. government agencies into clean, location-specific reference reports. By querying official REST endpoints in real time, GroundLayers organizes mapped land cover, ground elevation, soil composition, watershed boundaries, wetlands context, and flood hazards into an accessible location report.
Authoritative Data Sources
GroundLayers relies exclusively on official, public-domain U.S. government agency services:
- U.S. Census Bureau: Geocodes structured street addresses to precise geographic coordinates using official TIGER line benchmarks.
- USGS (U.S. Geological Survey): Provides 3DEP ground elevation, NLCD 2021 Land Cover classes, Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD HUC-12) subbasins, and earthquake catalog history.
- USDA NRCS: Delivers SSURGO soil map unit composition, dominant soil components, slope ranges, drainage classes, and hydrologic groups.
- FEMA: Queries the National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL) layer 28 for official flood hazard zone designations.
What GroundLayers Does Not Determine
GroundLayers provides factual public context at mapped coordinates. It does NOT provide:
- Land surveys or legal boundary determinations
- Structural engineering assessments or home safety ratings
- Property-level environmental risk scores or desirability rankings
- Flood insurance rate determinations or building advisories
- Real estate buying, selling, or valuation recommendations
Independence & Non-Governmental Status
GroundLayers is an independent public reference utility. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the U.S. Census Bureau, USGS, USDA, FEMA, or any other government agency. All public datasets are accessed via public agency APIs in accordance with open-data guidelines.