DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Instituto Cartográfico Militar was established in Santo Domingo in 1955, and this was combined in 1960 with the Comisión de Limites Geográficos Nationales and placed under the authority of the University of Santo Domingo to form the Instituto Cartográfico Universitario. This was subsequently renamed the Instituto Geográfico Universitario (IGU). The Inter-American Geodetic Survey was active in the Dominican Republic from 1946, when it helped to establish a survey control network for topographic mapping, and subsequently a topographic series was prepared jointly by the US Army Map Service (later, Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) and now National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)) and the IGU.

The principal topographic series is the 1:50,000 scale joint DMA/IGU series, issued between 1962 and 1968 in 123 sheets. This is a five-color map with 20 m contours and the projection is UTM, Clarke 1866 ellipsoid. There is also a 1:250,000 scale series in five sheets based on the JOG 1501 specification, entitled Mapa topográfico general, and prepared by the United States Army Topographic Command in cooperation with IGU in 1970. Contours are at 100 m intervals with supplementary contours at 20 m. There is also a series of city maps at scales of 1:50,000 or 1:10,000.

Map production at the IGU had been moribund for many years, and in 1986 a new agency, the Instituto Cartográfico Militar (ICM) was established in association with the Hydrographic Department to reactivate the mapping programs. Its main task is to update the 1:50,000 topographic series described above, and a number of new sheets were published with the help of the DMA. Also in the program is the revision of city plans, and a new 1:10,000 scale plan of Santo Domingo was due to be published in 1997, with plans of La Romana and Puerto Plata to follow. Some new hydrographic charts of the coastal waters are also in the program. In 1997, the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, Barcelona, and SPOT Image, Toulouse, began a project to produce orthorectified SPOT images of the whole country at 1:50,000 and 1:100,000 scales, radar imagery at 1:250,000 scale, and 12 sheets of orthorectified multispectral imagery in color corresponding with standard topographic 1:50,000 scale sheet lines.

Soviet military topographic mapping of the Dominican Republic is available at the following scales: 1:1,000,000 (3 sheets, complete coverage, published in 1966-1991); 1:500,000 (5 sheets, complete coverage, published 1979-1984); 1:200,000 (13 sheets, complete coverage, published in 1983) and a city (1:25,000) topographic map of Santo Domingo published in 1982. These products are available in print, digital raster and digital vector GIS formats from East View Geospatial.

Geological mapping is the responsibility of the Dirección General de Minería (DGM).

A 1:500,000 Mapa geológico was produced in 1956 and printed as a dye-line, and a 1:350,000 scale geological atlas appeared in 1969. Recent mapping collaboration has been with the German Bundesanstalt fϋr Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BfGR), Hannover. A new 1:250,000 scale map was published in 1991, and a 1:100,000 scale sheet of San Juan and the western part of the country appeared in 1988. Further sheets at this scale are in preparation with Spanish assistance.

A number of resource maps at scales of 1:250,000 and 1:500,000 were published in the 1960s by the Organization of American States (OAS). Themes covered included: climate, ecology, soil associations, land cover, productive capacity, geology and transport. Some further resource mapping of the northeast was published in 1977 by the OAS (Desarrollo regional de la Linea Norsoeste). The Departamento de Inventarios de Recursos Naturales (DIRENA) undertook some soil and land use mapping during the 1980s, and recently a GIS facility has been established, and some of the 1:50,000 scale maps have been digitized.

The Catastro Nacional has prepared cadastral maps of cities.

There are several good single-sheet general and tourist maps of the country. Mapas Gaar, Santa Domingo, is active in the production of tourist maps and also offers an extensive list of diazo city maps, and a complete set of provincial maps. Triunfo has a small scale road map of the country, with several city street maps, including a large indexed 1:24,000 scale map of Santa Domingo on the reverse. Maps from overseas publishers include those of Nelles (map of Hispaniola), International Travel Maps (ITM), and Berndtson &Berndtson (B&B). A small folded road map is produced by Cartographers Ltd.

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