The official mapping agency in Honduras is the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGNH), Comayagϋela (the twin town of capital Tegucigalpa), founded in 1946, although receiving its present name in 1966.
Very little of Honduras was mapped before the 1950s, when a 1:50,000 scale series was initiated by the Honduran Comisión Geográfica Especial in collaboration with the Inter-American Geodetic Survey (IAGS) and the American Army Map Service (AMS) (Series E752). 1:60,000 scale air photo cover was obtained in 1954-56, and horizontal and vertical control for the mapping was established by the IAGS in the same period. The 1:50,000 series is in 279 sheets, the first edition having been completed in 1987, and sheets are currently available, many in a second edition. The projection is Transverse Mercator, Clarke 1866 ellipsoid. The sheets are in the usual 10′ X 15′ AMS format, printed in five colors, with a 20 m contour interval and 10 m supplementary contours.
The country has also been covered in a joint 1:250,000 scale series of 15 sheets, undertaken by the IGNH in cooperation with the United States Defense Mapping Agency (now National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)).
In the late 1980s, a series of departmental maps, one for each of the 18 departments, were completed at scales of 1:120,000 to 1:350,000. These provide the most up-to-date topographic mapping of the country, with many sheets now in a second edition.
In 1984, five sheets at 1:100,000 scale were published in the border area with El Salvador, but no further sheets have been published at this scale.
Soviet military topographic mapping of Honduras is available at the following scales: 1:1,000,000 (4 sheets, complete coverage, published 1963-1990); 1:500,000 (8 sheets, complete coverage, published 1985-1988); 1:200,000 (9 sheets, southern country coverage, published in 1984) and a city (1:10,000) topographic map of Tegucigalpa published in 1979. These products are available in print, digital raster and digital vector GIS formats from East View Geospatial.
Nautical charts of the principal ports have been prepared by the Empresa Nacional Portuaria.
Three 1:500,000 scale aeronautical charts cover the country and are issued by the Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC).
The Dirección General de Minas e Hidrocarburos (DGMH) undertakes mineral resource surveys, but geological mapping is published by the IGNH. The principal series is at 1:50,000 scale using the corresponding topographic series as base maps. 31 sheets have so far been published at this scale. Some of these were prepared through a collaboration with the Honduran universities and the US Peace Corps. A new edition of the three-sheet 1:500,000 scale geological map of the country was published in 1991. Some hydrogeological maps were recently published, following collaborative work with the British Geological Survey, and a 1:1,000,000 geotechnical map was published in 1997.
Soil mapping has been undertaken by the Consejo Superior de Planificación Económica (CONSUPLANE) under the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Forest mapping has been undertaken by the Corporación Hondureña de Desarrollo Forestal (COHDEFOR), and a 1:20,000 scale series started.
A 1:10,000 scale map in four sheets of the capital, Tegucigalpa, was published in 1985 with 4 m interval contours. A new edition is in preparation. Other cities have also been mapped (Series E952) at scales of 1:12,500; 1:10,000 or 1:5,000, and pictomaps have been produced for some of the smaller cities. Cadastral survey is the responsibility of the Dirección Ejecutiva de Catastro.
The IGNH publishes an official map of the country at 1:500,000 scale and several smaller scale road and tourist maps, all of recent date.
The Traveller’s reference map of Honduras published by International Travel Maps (ITM), Vancouver, is an excellent general map of the country with layer tinted relief, an inset of Tegucigalpa and ComayagÏ‹ela and a place name index on the reverse.
Copyright © 2014 De Gruyter for e-version of World Mapping Today, 2nd Edition | Copyright © 2019 East View Geospatial, Inc.
