GIS Dictionary

Definitions for GIS terms related to operations such as analysis, GIS modeling and web-based GIS, cartography, and Esri software.

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coverage

  1. [ESRI software] A data model for storing geographic features. A coverage stores a set of thematically associated data considered to be a unit. It usually represents a single layer, such as soils, streams, roads, or land use. In a coverage, features are stored as both primary features (points, arcs, polygons) and secondary features (tics, links, annotation). Feature attributes are described and stored independently in feature attribute tables. Coverages cannot be edited in ArcGIS 8.3 and subsequent versions.