Advanced GNS Searches

For GNS advanced searches, you can enter an extensive list of feature types as part of your search criteria. These include oil pipelines, refugee camps, and vegetation types. Other options limit searches by the latitude and longitude boundaries of a rectangle, use special character sets from foreign languages, and use government and military codes as part of the search. If you want to run these advanced searches, the GNS Web site has links with explanations. If GNS finds records that match your search criteria, the features appear on a new page. A number of pieces of information are. For the average civilian user, the most useful data includes

• Name of the feature.
• Region of the world where the feature is located. Click the link to get an explanation of the abbreviation.
• Designation: The feature type (such as populated locality, farm, or reservoir). Click the link to get the definition of the abbreviation.
• Latitude and longitude coordinates.
• Area: Country and state or province information for the feature. Click the link for the meaning of the code.

You can also download tab-delimited text files from the GNS Web site for any country that contain features and information. This data can easily be imported into spreadsheets and databases.

Waypoint repositories

A number of Web sites provide waypoints that you can upload to your GPS receiver. (A waypoint is a set of coordinates for a location.) With these waypoint repositories, you can search a region or for a feature name for its waypoints in a database. If a waypoint has been logged in the site database, you can download the waypoint and then upload the coordinates to your GPS receiver. Some of the waypoint sites include

• http://wayhoo.com: This site converts GNIS and GNS feature information into waypoints. There are also coordinates for airports and a database where users can upload waypoints.
• www.travelbygps.com: This site holds a collection of waypoints for interesting places all over the world, including photos and descriptions. The site has an extensive collection of links to Web sites with special interest waypoints.
• www.trailregistry.com: This is a waypoint collection dedicated to hikers and backpackers.
• www.trailwaypoints.com: This is a GPS repository site that collects recreationoriented waypoints from all over the world.

Using the GEOnet Name Server (GNS)

The GEONet Name Server (GNS) searches for features around the world. GNS is located at http://earth-info.nima.mil/gns/html/index.html. The database contains over 3.5 million features and over 5 million place names for locations outside of the United States. The military relies on GNS for its operations, so the database is updated every other week. GNS is primarily designed for military use. Some of the search criteria and information in the database isn’t very useful to the average civilian. At best expect to find these types of information for a given feature:

• Country
• Type
• Latitude and longitude

To perform a basic GNS search for a feature, follow these steps:

1. Go to the GNS Web site at http://earth-info.nima.mil/gns/html.
2. Click the Access GNS link.
3. Click the GNS Search link in the GNS Main Menu at the left of the page. You can enter search criteria by scrolling down the page.
4. In the Name text box, enter the name of the feature you’re looking for. A drop-down list box to the right of the text box lets you narrow your search with these options:• Starts With • Is an Exact Match • Contains • Ends With
5. If you know the country the feature is located in, select the country from the list.
6. Click the Search Database button.