Easy way to remove collars from GeoTIFF of USGS Topo?
The "n" and "g" the the beginning of the URL are switched, it should be this: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
I just download 2 adjacent tiles and see what you mean there is overlap since the maps include all the legend and metadata too:
However, you could script a solution with Python. In the xml file of the data you will see information on the boundng box of the actual data:
Which corresponds to the map (looking at a corner):
So you could for each TIFF read the bounding box from the xml data and apply an Extract by Rectangle—Help | ArcGIS Desktop to get the part you are interested in.
In additional, you would have to transform the decimal degrees from the bounding box to North_American_1927_Polyconic, since the tiles have projected coordinates. See the worldfile (tfw):
and the coordinate files (.prj)
In order to extract the rectangle correctly you would have to specify the rectangle using the coordinates of the TIFF (the projected coordinates and not the geographic coordinates). To do this right you would have to project the decimal degrees found in the xml to the coordinate system "North_American_1927_Polyconic" (at least that is the coordinate system from the example tiles I downloaded). The challenge here might be the fact that this projected coordinate system is not a standard coordinate system recognized by ArcGIS as shown below:
Now it seems to be aligning with the basemap if I use the first transformation offered to me:
... and some changes through the years in the flow of the river become clear:
If I have some time, I will see what I can come up with to process the data. This may take some time though.
Hi Sean Wineland ,
Just tried something out on a single TIFF, but I am a bit disappointed by the result, since a strip of white remains on the left side, probably since the coordinates may not have been transformed correctly:
Find below the code I used:
def main():
import arcpy
tiff_in = r'C:\GeoNet\TopoView\MA_Boston North_350031_1956_24000_geo.tif'
tiff_out = r'C:\GeoNet\TopoView\tiff\MA350031.tif'
fc_out = r'C:\GeoNet\TopoView\test.gdb\polygon_rectangle'
sr_xml = arcpy.SpatialReference(4326)
trans = "NAD_1927_To_WGS_1984_3"
xml_file = tiff_in + ".xml"
prj_file = tiff_in + ".prj"
sr_tif = arcpy.SpatialReference(prj_file)
polygon = getRectanglePolygon(xml_file, sr_xml, sr_tif, trans)
arcpy.CopyFeatures_management([polygon], fc_out)
rectangle_extent = "{0} {1} {2} {3}".format(polygon.extent.XMin, polygon.extent.YMin, polygon.extent.XMax, polygon.extent.YMax)
arcpy.Clip_management(in_raster=tiff_in, rectangle=rectangle_extent,
out_raster=tiff_out, in_template_dataset=fc_out,
nodata_value="256", clipping_geometry="NONE",
maintain_clipping_extent="NO_MAINTAIN_EXTENT")
def getRectanglePolygon(xml_file, sr_in, sr_out, trans):
dct_bounding = getBoundingCoords(xml_file)
polygon = createPolygonFromCoords(dct_bounding, sr_in, sr_out, trans)
return polygon
def getBoundingCoords(xml_file):
lst_tags = ["westbc", "eastbc", "northbc", "southbc"]
dct = {}
with open(xml_file, 'r') as f:
for line in f:
line = line.replace("\n", "")
for tag in lst_tags:
if tag in line:
val = getValue(line, tag)
dct[tag] = val
return dct
def createPolygonFromCoords(dct, sr_in, sr_out, trans):
xmin = dct["westbc"]
xmax = dct["eastbc"]
ymin = dct["southbc"]
ymax = dct["northbc"]
lst_pnt_in = [arcpy.Point(xmin, ymin), arcpy.Point(xmin, ymax),
arcpy.Point(xmax, ymax), arcpy.Point(xmax, ymin),
arcpy.Point(xmin, ymin)]
lst_pntg_in = [arcpy.PointGeometry(pnt, sr_in) for pnt in lst_pnt_in]
lst_pntg_out = [pntg.projectAs(sr_out, trans) for pntg in lst_pntg_in]
lst_pnt_out = [pntg.firstPoint for pntg in lst_pntg_out]
return arcpy.Polygon(arcpy.Array(lst_pnt_out), sr_out)
def getValue(line, tag):
start_tag = "<{0}>".format(tag)
end_tag = "</{0}>".format(tag)
pos1 = line.find(start_tag)
pos2 = line.find(end_tag)
txt = line[pos1 + len(start_tag):pos2]
return float(txt)
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()This could be place in a loop to run through the TIFF files you have, but first the possible shift in coordinates should be examined and corrected.
