The United States has three distinct territories located in the Pacific Ocean: American Samoa, Guam, and Northern Mariana Islands. Guam is the westernmost inhabited territory of the United States while American Samoa is the southernmost inhabited territory.

• Geography - American Samoa
• Geography - Guam & Northern Mariana Islands
• Features to Collect
• Point Border Color
• Tips and Tricks
• Questions 

Geography - American Samoa

American Samoa is a set of islands in the southern hemisphere located in the central Pacific Ocean south of Hawaii and east of Australia. The islands that make up American Samoa include Tutuila, Aunu’u, Ofu, Olosega, Ta’u, Swains Island, and Rose Atoll; Swains Island to the north and Rose Atoll to the east are both uninhabited coral atolls while the other five islands are populated.

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Geography - Guam & Northern Mariana Islands 

Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands are positioned in the western Pacific Ocean north of Australia and southeast of Japan. Although they are positioned closely together, Guam is its own independent territory, and the rest of the islands compose what’s known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Commonwealth is subdivided into administrative divisions representing the Southern Islands (including the islands of Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, and Saipan) and the Municipality of the Northern Mariana Islands. Most of the islands in the Municipality of the Northern Mariana Islands are unpopulated due to volcanic activity; see the Administrative Divisions of this Wikipedia article for which islands are populated. 

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Click on each of the thumbnails below for a larger view of the islands. 

Features to Collect 

This challenge includes all the structure types we collect. As you can see from the maps above, some seed data already exists for these areas, though it’s mostly schools and post offices. There are hardly any existing points on the map for other features such as fire stations, cemeteries, hospitals, law enforcement, and maybe even city halls. Therefore, much of the challenge will be collecting new points from scratch for the populated islands.  

Point Border Color 

Each point in the editor has a colored border. These colors are part of our tiered editing process and signal to other editors that a point has passed through the upper tiers and does not need to be edited again.  Our November 2018 newsletter has an article titled Editor Roles and Point Colors that describes this process further.

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

Tips & Tricks  

Newsletter Articles 

Below is a list of newsletter articles that may be of assistance when researching features on the islands: 

• Cemeteries with Multiple Names: Which One to Use? (January 2021) 

• School Icon Review (November 2020) 

• Cemetery Research and Guidance (September 2019) 

• Aerial Photo Interpretation series (especially for features such as fire stations, cemeteries, hospitals, law enforcement, post offices, schools, etc.) 

• Technical Community Colleges vs. Trade Schools (May 2017) 

• Closer Look at the Layers List (July 2019)  

Aerial Imagery 

Note that the best imagery for these areas is going to be ESRI’s imagery. NAIP imagery does exist for these areas, but just like with the mainland, it’s not always available at closer zoom levels.  

Special Characters  

While researching features, you may encounter several names with special characters such as apostrophes, hyphens, and letters with diacritics (e.g., the island of Ta’u, or the city of Hagåtña in Guam). The TNMCorps database does not handle special characters very well, so please refrain from adding diacritics. Hyphens, apostrophes, and slashes are permitted as long as they are part of the official name; note that hyphens and slashes require a space on each side. Check out the Name and Address Formatting Guide or this Q&A post for more on special characters. 

Questions

Please reach out to us at nationalmapcorps@usgs.gov with questions or comments.