January 25, 2021

Students from the Forestry Program at the Center for Technology, Essex recently wrapped up a mapping project made possible by the Orienteering USA’s Youth Mapping Program. The CTE students chose to create detailed maps of the high school campus and neighboring Tree Farm Recreational Fields. 

These maps (see below) will be used by the program for its land navigation unit. As an added bonus, the program this year was able to learn the process of ground confirmation of details based on aerial mapping. 

The students had to go out and confirm items that the mappers couldn't discern properly, including providing photos. These maps were generated remotely using public data, Google Maps, Strava, aerial photography, and more. 

The Youth Mapping Program (YMP) was developed to make it convenient for schools and non-profit youth organizations in the United States to get a good quality orienteering map made of their school or a nearby park to help in teaching orienteering. YMP map projects are intended to be small teaching maps, typically less than 0.5 km2 (~120 acres) in size.

Schools participate in the creation of the map by working with the remote mapper to be their ‘eyes on the ground.’

 Click each map to below to enlarge.