Southampton (village), New York
Southampton is a village in Suffolk County, New York, United States. The village is named after the Earl of Southampton; the Village of Southampton is in the southeast part of the county in the Town of Southampton, is colloquially known as Southampton, despite being part of the Town of Southampton. The population was 3,109 at the 2010 census. Southampton is the largest of communities in the summer colony known as The Hamptons, it is arguably the commercial center of the southern "fork" of Long Island, serves as the home base for several region-wide businesses and has the area's only hospital. Southampton Village is considered one of the area's two most prestigious communities. A large number of wealthy and influential people have homes in the "estate section" of the village, the area north of the Atlantic Ocean front. Southampton has been home to prominent residents including members of the Ford, Du Pont, Eisenhower and Morgan families. Today, the village is itself home to half of the billionaires who have residences in the eight hamlets and villages that constitute the Hamptons.
Southampton Village has a large year round population, at 3,100 residents. It has 2 - 3x the population of any of the other hamlets in the Hamptons; as a result, it is most built up of the communities in the Hamptons. It is the most diverse of the villages and hamlets that constitute the Hamptons. Southampton Village has the largest communities of African Americans and Asians in the Hamptons; the incorporated Village of Southampton is headed by Mayor Michael Irving. This area is policed by the Southampton Village Police Department. Southampton, settled in 1640 and incorporated as a village in 1894 began with a small group of English settlers who set sail from Lynn and landed on June 12, 1640, at what is now known as Conscience Point, it is the oldest English settlement in the state of New York and is named after the English Earl of Southampton. The Shinnecock tribe welcomed the arrival of the white settlers in 1640 and not only gave them land to live on, "Olde Towne", but shared with the settlers their knowledge of planting corn and fertilizing it with fish, growing crops, digging clams and scallops from nearby bays and trapping game.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, fishing and duck raising were the predominant industries. The early settlers, with the help of a resident Shinnecock Indian guide, were led over an old woodland trail, now North Sea Road to an ideal spot for their first settlement. There, at the head of, they constructed their first homes; the Shinnecock Reservation, established in 1701, is the oldest Native American reservation in the United States. A property called the Halsey House was a homestead by pioneer Thomas Halsey in 1640. A rare "first period" house was built in 1660 when Main Street, in the pioneer hamlet of Southampton, was first laid out, its owner, Thomas Halsey, was one of the original families who bought property from the Shinnecocks in 1640. It is one of the oldest English-type frame houses in the state. Dr. Theodore Gaillard Thomas, a New York City physician is regarded at the founder of the resort community termed the Summer Colony, of Southampton, he convinced a number of his wealthy clients about the beauty and potential restorative nature of the rural environment of Southampton.
His efforts to develop this resort community began in 1863. He proved successful at establishing what grew into a prominent and affluent community of summer residents. Dr. Thomas and his friends established many of the leading institutions in Southampton including the St. Andrews Dune Church, the Shinnecock Golf Club, the Meadow Club, the Southampton Beach Club and The Parrish Art Museum. Over time, several of the other villages and hamlets in what has become called the Hamptons became a haven for affluent summer season vacationers. Southampton Village, which hosted the earliest summer community of prominent residents and was arguably the center for upper class Americans, grew larger and faster than the others. Southampton has served as home to members of the Ford, Du Pont, Atterbury and Eisenhower families. Southampton Village is regarded as one of the premier summer resort areas in the country; the community of summer residents occupy the top echelon of American social and financial circles.
Accordingly, real estate is expensive in the village. The Estate Section, which contains the majority of the homes for the affluent residents, lies directly north of the Atlantic oceanfront and extends to Hill Street. Particular streets of note in the area include Ox Pasture Road, Halsey Neck Lane, Coopers Neck Lane, First Neck Lane and South Main Street; the homes around Lake Agawam, referred to by Dr. Thomas as "the center of our Summer Colony" are noteworthy for their architectural pedigree and historical provenance; the oceanfront roads - Gin Lane and Meadow Lane - are the most expensive roads in the village. Meadow Lane in particular has been called Billionaire Lane, cited as having among the most expensive residential real estate in the country. Other areas in the village house the large population of year-round residents; these neighborhoods extend from Hill Street northwards to Route 27, east to the hamlet of Water Mill, west to the area of Tuckahoe in Southampton Town. The Shinnecock Indian Reservation borders the village on its southwestern border.
Shinnecock Hills Golf Club one of the olde
ZIP Code
A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service in a system it introduced in 1963. The term ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan; the basic format consists of five digits. An extended ZIP+4 code was introduced in 1983 which includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, followed by a hyphen and four additional digits that reference a more specific location; the term ZIP Code was registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, but its registration has since expired; the early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers. The United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example: The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city. By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963; the USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are written with both letters capitalized.
An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems", which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Robert Moon is considered the father of the ZIP Code; the post office only credits Moon with the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or "sec center." An SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The fourth and fifth digits, which give a more precise locale within the SCF, were proposed by Henry Bentley Hahn Sr.
The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes. The mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, most of their employees work the night shift. Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. In the case of large cities, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number thus: In 1967, these became mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, the system was soon adopted generally; the United States Post Office used a cartoon character, which it called Mr. ZIP, to promote the use of the ZIP Code, he was depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODE" in the selvage of panes of postage stamps or on the covers of booklet panes of stamps. In 1971 Elmira Star-Gazette reporter Dick Baumbach found out the White House was not using a ZIP Code on its envelopes.
Herb Klein, special assistant to President Nixon, responded by saying the next printing of envelopes would include the ZIP Code. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4 called "plus-four codes", "add-on codes", or "add-ons". A ZIP+4 Code uses the basic five-digit code plus four additional digits to identify a geographic segment within the five-digit delivery area, such as a city block, a group of apartments, an individual high-volume receiver of mail, a post office box, or any other unit that could use an extra identifier to aid in efficient mail sorting and delivery. However, initial attempts to promote universal use of the new format met with public resistance and today the plus-four code is not required. In general, mail is read by a multiline optical character reader that instantly determines the correct ZIP+4 Code from the address—along with the more specific delivery point—and sprays an Intelligent Mail barcode on the face of the mail piece that corresponds to 11 digits—nine for the ZIP+4 Code and two for the delivery point.
For Post Office Boxes, the general rule is. The add-on code is one of the following: the last four digits of the box number, zero plus the last three digits of the box number, or, if the box number consists of fewer than four digits, enough zeros are attached to the front of the box number to produce a four-digit number. However, there is no uniform rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box; the ZIP Code is translated into an Intelligent Mail barcode, printed on the mailpiece to make it easier for automated machines to sort. A barcode can be printed by the sender, it is better to let the post office put one on. In general, the post office uses OCR technology, though in some cases a human might have to read and enter the address. Customers who send bulk mail can get a discount on postage if they have printed the barcode themselves and have presorted the mai
United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau is a principal agency of the U. S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy; the Census Bureau is part of the U. S. Department of Commerce and its director is appointed by the President of the United States; the Census Bureau's primary mission is conducting the U. S. Census every ten years, which allocates the seats of the U. S. House of Representatives to the states based on their population; the Bureau's various censuses and surveys help allocate over $400 billion in federal funds every year and it helps states, local communities, businesses make informed decisions. The information provided by the census informs decisions on where to build and maintain schools, transportation infrastructure, police and fire departments. In addition to the decennial census, the Census Bureau continually conducts dozens of other censuses and surveys, including the American Community Survey, the U. S. Economic Census, the Current Population Survey.
Furthermore and foreign trade indicators released by the federal government contain data produced by the Census Bureau. Article One of the United States Constitution directs the population be enumerated at least once every ten years and the resulting counts used to set the number of members from each state in the House of Representatives and, by extension, in the Electoral College; the Census Bureau now conducts a full population count every 10 years in years ending with a zero and uses the term "decennial" to describe the operation. Between censuses, the Census Bureau makes population projections. In addition, Census data directly affects how more than $400 billion per year in federal and state funding is allocated to communities for neighborhood improvements, public health, education and more; the Census Bureau is mandated with fulfilling these obligations: the collecting of statistics about the nation, its people, economy. The Census Bureau's legal authority is codified in Title 13 of the United States Code.
The Census Bureau conducts surveys on behalf of various federal government and local government agencies on topics such as employment, health, consumer expenditures, housing. Within the bureau, these are known as "demographic surveys" and are conducted perpetually between and during decennial population counts; the Census Bureau conducts economic surveys of manufacturing, retail and other establishments and of domestic governments. Between 1790 and 1840, the census was taken by marshals of the judicial districts; the Census Act of 1840 established a central office. Several acts followed that revised and authorized new censuses at the 10-year intervals. In 1902, the temporary Census Office was moved under the Department of Interior, in 1903 it was renamed the Census Bureau under the new Department of Commerce and Labor; the department was intended to consolidate overlapping statistical agencies, but Census Bureau officials were hindered by their subordinate role in the department. An act in 1920 changed the date and authorized manufacturing censuses every two years and agriculture censuses every 10 years.
In 1929, a bill was passed mandating the House of Representatives be reapportioned based on the results of the 1930 Census. In 1954, various acts were codified into Title 13 of the US Code. By law, the Census Bureau must count everyone and submit state population totals to the U. S. President by December 31 of any year ending in a zero. States within the Union receive the results in the spring of the following year; the United States Census Bureau defines four statistical regions, with nine divisions. The Census Bureau regions are "widely used...for data collection and analysis". The Census Bureau definition is pervasive. Regional divisions used by the United States Census Bureau: Region 1: Northeast Division 1: New England Division 2: Mid-Atlantic Region 2: Midwest Division 3: East North Central Division 4: West North Central Region 3: South Division 5: South Atlantic Division 6: East South Central Division 7: West South Central Region 4: West Division 8: Mountain Division 9: Pacific Many federal, state and tribal governments use census data to: Decide the location of new housing and public facilities, Examine the demographic characteristics of communities and the US, Plan transportation systems and roadways, Determine quotas and creation of police and fire precincts, Create localized areas for elections, utilities, etc.
Gathers population information every 10 years The United States Census Bureau is committed to confidentiality, guarantees non-disclosure of any addresses or personal information related to individuals or establishments. Title 13 of the U. S. Code establishes penalties for the disclosure of this information. All Census employees must sign an affidavit of non-disclosure prior to employment; the Bureau cannot share responses, addresses or personal information with anyone including United States or foreign government
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Watermill
A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling, rolling, or hammering; such processes are needed in the production of many material goods, including flour, paper and many metal products. These watermills may comprise gristmills, paper mills, textile mills, trip hammering mills, rolling mills, wire drawing mills. One major way to classify watermills is by wheel orientation, one powered by a vertical waterwheel through a gear mechanism, the other equipped with a horizontal waterwheel without such a mechanism; the former type can be further divided, depending on where the water hits the wheel paddles, into undershot, overshot and pitchback waterwheel mills. Another way to classify water mills is by an essential trait about their location: tide mills use the movement of the tide. According to Terry S. Reynolds and R. J. Forbes, the water wheel may have originated from the ancient Near East in the 3rd century BC for use in moving millstones and small-scale grain grinding.
Reynolds suggests that the first water wheels were norias and, by the 2nd century BC, evolved into the vertical watermill in Syria and Asia Minor, from where it spread to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. S. Avitsur supports a Near-Eastern origin for the watermill. Engineers in the Hellenistic world used the two main components of watermills, the waterwheel and toothed gearing, along with the Roman Empire, operated undershot and breastshot waterwheel mills. Early evidence of a water-driven wheel is the Perachora wheel, in Greece. An early written reference is in the technical treatises Pneumatica and Parasceuastica of the Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium; the British historian of technology M. J. T. Lewis has shown that those portions of Philo of Byzantium's mechanical treatise which describe water wheels and which have been regarded as Arabic interpolations date back to the Greek 3rd-century BC original; the sakia gear is fully developed, attested in a 2nd-century BC Hellenistic wall painting in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Lewis assigns the date of the invention of the horizontal-wheeled mill to the Greek colony of Byzantium in the first half of the 3rd century BC, that of the vertical-wheeled mill to Ptolemaic Alexandria around 240 BC. The Greek geographer Strabon reports in his Geography a water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira, Asia Minor, before 71 BC; the Roman engineer Vitruvius has the first technical description of a watermill, dated to 40/10 BC. He seems to indicate the existence of water-powered kneading machines; the Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica tells of an advanced overshot wheel mill around 20 BC/10 AD. He praised for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labour: Hold back your hand from the mill, you grinding girls. For Demeter has imposed the labours of your hands on the nymphs, who leaping down upon the topmost part of the wheel, rotate its axle. If we learn to feast toil-free on the fruits of the earth, we taste again the golden age.
The Roman encyclopedist Pliny mentions in his Naturalis Historia of around 70 AD water-powered trip hammers operating in the greater part of Italy. There is evidence of a fulling mill in 73/4 AD in Roman Syria. Another Roman author Ausonius mentions a lot of watermills in the walley of Rhine and its tributaries in the 4th century, it is that a water-powered stamp mill was used at Dolaucothi to crush gold-bearing quartz, with a possible date of the late 1st century to the early 2nd century. The stamps were operated as a batch of four working against a large conglomerate block, now known as Carreg Pumpsaint. Similar anvil stones have been found at other Roman mines across Europe in Spain and Portugal; the 1st-century AD multiple mill complex of Barbegal in southern France has been described as "the greatest known concentration of mechanical power in the ancient world". It featured 16 overshot waterwheels to power an equal number of flour mills; the capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time.
A similar mill complex existed on the Janiculum hill, whose supply of flour for Rome's population was judged by emperor Aurelian important enough to be included in the Aurelian walls in the late 3rd century. A breastshot wheel mill dating to the late 2nd century AD was excavated at Les Martres-de-Veyre, France; the 3rd-century AD Hierapolis water-powered stone sawmill is the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism. Further sawmills powered by crank and connecting rod mechanisms, are archaeologically attested for the 6th-century water-powered stone sawmills at Gerasa and Ephesus. Literary references to water-powered marble saws in what is now Germany can be found in Ausonius 4th-century poem Mosella, they seem to be indicated about the same time by the Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia, demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire. The earliest turbine mill was
Administrative divisions of New York (state)
The administrative divisions of New York are the various units of government that provide local government services in the state of New York. The state is divided into counties, cities and villages. Cities and villages are municipal corporations with their own governments that provide most local government services. Whether a municipality is defined as a city, town, or village is dependent not on population or land area, but rather on the form of government selected by the residents and approved by the state legislature; each such government is granted varying home rule powers as provided by the New York Constitution. New York has various corporate entities that serve single purposes that are local governments, such as school and fire districts. New York has 62 counties, which are subdivided into 62 cities. In total, the state has more than 3,400 active local governments and more than 4,200 taxing jurisdictions. Counties and incorporated municipal governments in New York State have been granted broad home rule powers enabling them to provide services to their residents and to regulate the quality of life within their jurisdictions.
They do so while adhering to the United States Constitution and the Constitution of the State of New York. Articles VIII and IX of the state constitution establish the rights and responsibilities of the municipal governments; the New York State Constitution provides for democratically elected legislative bodies for counties, cities and villages. These legislative bodies are granted the power to enact local laws as needed in order to provide services to their citizens and fulfill their various obligations; the county is the primary administrative division of New York. There are sixty-two counties in the state. Five of the counties are boroughs of the city of New York and do not have functioning county governments. While created as subdivisions of the state meant to carry out state functions, counties are now considered municipal corporations with the power and fiscal capacity to provide an array of local government services; such services include law enforcement and public safety and health services, education.
Every county outside of New York City has a county seat, the location of county government. Nineteen counties operate under county charters, while 38 operate under the general provisions of the County Law. Although all counties have a certain latitude to govern themselves, "charter counties" are afforded greater home rule powers; the charter counties are Albany, Chautauqua, Dutchess, Herkimer, Nassau, Onondaga, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, Tompkins and Westchester. Sixteen counties are governed through an assembly with the power of a board of supervisors, composed of the supervisors of its constituent towns and cities. In most of these counties, each supervisor's vote is weighted in accordance with the town's population in order to abide by the U. S. Supreme Court mandate of "one person, one vote". Other counties have legislative districts of equal population. Most counties in New York do not use the term "Board of Supervisors." 34 counties have a County Legislature, six counties have a Board of Legislators, one county has a Board of Representatives.
The five counties, or boroughs, of New York City are governed by a 51-member City Council. In non-charter counties, the legislative body exercises executive power as well. Although the legislature can delegate certain functions and duties to a county administrator, who acts on behalf of the legislature, the legislature must maintain ultimate control over the actions of the administrator. Many, but not all, charter counties have an elected executive, independent of the legislature. In New York, each city is a autonomous incorporated area that, with the exceptions of New York City and Geneva, is contained within one county. Cities in New York are classified by the U. S. Census Bureau as incorporated places, they provide all services to their residents and have the highest degree of home rule and taxing jurisdiction over their residents. The main difference between a city and a village is that cities are organized and governed according to their charters, which can differ among cities, while most villages are subject to a uniform statewide Village Law.
Villages are part of a town, with residents who pay taxes to and receive services from the town. Cities are neither part of nor subordinate to towns except for the city of Sherrill, which for some purposes is treated as if it were a village of the town of Vernon; some cities are surrounded by a town of the same name. There are sixty-two cities in the state; as of 2000, 54.1% of state residents were living in a city. In 1686, the English colonial governor granted the cities of New York and Albany city charters, which were recognized by the first State Constitution in 1777. All other cities have been established by act of the state legislature and have been granted a charter. Cities have been granted the power to revise the
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, the natural hazards that threaten it; the organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology, geography and hydrology. The USGS is a fact-finding research organization with no regulatory responsibility; the USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. The USGS employs 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia; the USGS has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, Menlo Park, California. The current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is "science for a changing world." The agency's previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its hundredth anniversary, was "Earth Science in the Public Service." Since 2012, the USGS science focus is directed at six topical "Mission Areas", namely Climate and Land Use Change, Core Science Systems, Ecosystems and Minerals and Environmental Health, Natural Hazards, Water.
In December 2012, the USGS split the Energy and Minerals and Environmental Health Mission Area resulting in seven topical Mission Areas, with the two new areas being: Energy and Minerals and Environmental Health. Administratively, it is divided into six Regional Units. Other specific programs include: Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide; the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location and magnitude of global earthquakes. The USGS runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System; the USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, the public, both domestic and worldwide, about significant earthquakes. It maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research, it conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards. USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast.
As of 2005, the agency is working to create a National Volcano Early Warning System by improving the instrumentation monitoring the 169 volcanoes in U. S. territory and by establishing methods for measuring the relative threats posed at each site. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time; the USGS collaborates with Canadian and Mexican government scientists, along with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, to produce the North American Environmental Atlas, used to depict and track environmental issues for a continental perspective. The USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online. National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center implements partner-driven science to improve understanding of past and present land use change, develops relevant climate and land use forecasts, identifies lands and communities that are most vulnerable to adverse impacts of change from the local to global scale.
Since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global and planetary exploration and mapping. In collaboration with Stanford University, the USGS operates the USGS-Stanford Ion Microprobe Laboratory, a world-class analytical facility for U--Pb geochronology and trace element analyses of minerals and other earth materials. USGS operates a number of water related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program and National Water-Quality Assessment Program. USGS Water data is publicly available from their National Water Information System database; the USGS operates the National Wildlife Health Center, whose mission is "to serve the nation and its natural resources by providing sound science and technical support, to disseminate information to promote science-based decisions affecting wildlife and ecosystem health. The NWHC provides information, technical assistance, research and leadership on national and international wildlife health issues." It is the agency responsible for surveillance of H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in the United States.
The USGS runs 17 biological research centers in the United States, including the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. The USGS is investigating collaboration with the social networking site Twitter to allow for more rapid construction of ShakeMaps; the USGS produces several national series of topographic maps which vary in scale and extent, with some wide gaps in coverage, notably the complete absence of 1:50,000 scale topographic maps or their equivalent. The largest and best-known topographic series is the 7.5-minute, 1:24,000 scale, quadrangle, a non-metric scale unique to the United States. Each of these maps covers an area bounded by two lines of latitude and two lines of longitude spaced 7.5 minutes apart. Nearly 57,000 individual maps in this series cover the 48 contiguous states, Hawaii, U. S. territories, areas of Alaska near Anchorage and Prudhoe Bay. The area covered by each map varies with the latitude of its represented location due to convergence of the meridians. At lower latitudes, near 30° north, a 7.5-minute quadrangle contains an area of about 64 square miles.
At 49° north latitude, 49 square miles are contained within a quadrangle of that size. As a unique non-metric map scale, the 1:24,000 scale requires a separate and specialized romer scale for pl
