Data sources

Where every piece of map data in ZoRove comes from, and how to check it against the original.

ZoRove is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any government agency or department, and it does not represent any government entity.

ZoRove displays public data published by government agencies. Every dataset is listed below with a link to its official source, so you can always check what we show against what the agency publishes.

Federal sources

  • Public lands overlay

    Boundaries and managing agency for federal, tribal and state lands.

    U.S. Geological Survey — Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US)

    https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/pad-us-data-download
  • BLM land, OHV areas and routes

    Surface management boundaries, designated off-highway vehicle areas, and the ground transportation network of roads, trails and primitive routes.

    Bureau of Land Management — National Geospatial Services

    https://www.blm.gov/services/geospatial
  • Forest Service roads, MVUM and trails

    Forest road network, Motor Vehicle Use Map routes with their vehicle-class and seasonal restrictions, and non-motorized trails.

    USDA Forest Service — Enterprise Data Warehouse

    https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/edw/datasets.php
  • Wilderness areas

    Designated wilderness boundaries under the National Wilderness Preservation System.

    National Wilderness Preservation System (USFS, BLM, NPS and USFWS)

    https://www.wilderness.net https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/wilderness
  • National Park Service trails and points of interest

    Public trail networks and mapped points of interest inside NPS units.

    National Park Service

    https://www.nps.gov
  • Government campgrounds

    Federal campground locations, facility types, road access and reservation links.

    Recreation.gov Recreation Information Database (RIDB), plus the National Park Service API

    https://www.recreation.gov https://www.nps.gov/subjects/developer/index.htm
  • Active fire perimeters

    Wildfire perimeters for fires with recent activity, refreshed every 30 minutes.

    National Interagency Fire Center — Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services (WFIGS)

    https://www.nifc.gov
  • Magnetic declination

    The correction between magnetic and true north used by both compasses.

    NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information — World Magnetic Model

    https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag
  • Topo contours and elevation

    Contour lines and shaded relief, generated on your device from public elevation data.

    USGS 3D Elevation Program and NASA SRTM, distributed as Terrain Tiles

    https://www.usgs.gov/3d-elevation-program
  • VIN decoding in the Garage

    Decodes a vehicle identification number into make, model, year and specifications.

    NHTSA Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing (vPIC)

    https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov

State wildlife agencies

Hunting unit boundaries come from each state's own wildlife agency. ZoRove currently covers five states:

Hunting regulations are not map data. A unit boundary tells you where a unit is, nothing more. Seasons, tag requirements, weapon restrictions and access rules all come from the state agency, and only the agency's own publication is authoritative. Check it before you hunt.

Not government data

The rest of what you see in ZoRove comes from open data projects and from other users. None of it is published by a government agency:

  • Base map, POI layers and place search

    Roads, tracks, water, place names, and the fuel/water/camp/supply pins. Licensed under the Open Database License.

    OpenStreetMap contributors

    https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
  • Cell coverage

    Crowd-sourced carrier coverage measurements. Indicative only — not carrier-published coverage.

    CellMapper

    https://www.cellmapper.net
  • Weather

    Current conditions and forecast. Open-Meteo aggregates national weather service models; we do not read those agencies directly.

    Open-Meteo

    https://open-meteo.com
  • Saved places, reviews and photos

    Submitted by ZoRove users. Not verified by any agency, and not government data.

    The ZoRove community

How current is any of this?

It varies by dataset, and the difference matters:

  • Fire perimeters refresh every 30 minutes while the layer is on. This is the only near-live layer in the app.
  • Public lands, Forest Service and BLM data are re-fetched from the agency each time you pan, so you see whatever the agency is currently publishing — but agencies themselves republish on their own schedule, often annually.
  • Campgrounds are imported periodically rather than read live.
  • Downloaded offline map packs are frozen at the moment you downloaded them. Re-download a region to update it.
Boundaries and road status change, and data lags reality. A road can be gated, a closure can be seasonal, and a boundary can be redrawn well before any dataset catches up. ZoRove is a planning tool, not an authority on access — verify locally before you commit to a route, and follow signage on the ground over anything on this map.

Something look wrong?

If a layer disagrees with the agency it came from, tell us on the feature board or email hello@zorove.com — include roughly where you were and which layer. If the agency's own data is wrong, the fix has to happen upstream at the source linked above; we display their data, we don't edit it.

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