National Topographic System

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The National Topographic System or NTS is the system used by Natural Resources Canada for providing general purpose topographic maps of the country. NTS maps are available in a variety of scales, the standard being 1:50,000 and 1:250,000 scales.^[1] The maps provide details on landforms and terrain, lakes and rivers, forested areas, administrative zones, populated areas, roads and railways, as well as other human-made features.^[2] These maps are currently used by all levels of government and industry for forest fire and flood control (as well as other environmental issues), depiction of crop areas, right-of-way, real estate planning, development of natural resources and highway planning. To add context, land area outside Canada is depicted on the 1:250,000 maps, but not on the 1:50,000 maps.