TIGER: US Census Tracts

  • The TIGER/2020/TRACT dataset provides 2020 US Census tract boundaries, covering the United States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Island areas.

  • Census tracts are roughly equivalent to neighborhoods in urban areas and are represented as polygons, totaling over 85,000 features.

  • This dataset includes attributes like land and water area, geographic identifiers, and census tract names.

  • Users can access and analyze the dataset through Google Earth Engine using provided code snippets and FeatureView for visualization.

  • The data is subject to US Census Bureau terms of use and requires proper citation when used in publications or derived products.
TIGER/2020/TRACT
Dataset Availability
2020-01-01T00:00:00Z–2020-01-02T00:00:00Z
Dataset Provider
Earth Engine Snippet
FeatureCollection
ee.FeatureCollection("TIGER/2020/TRACT")
FeatureView
ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer("TIGER/2020/TRACT_FeatureView")
Tags
census city infrastructure-boundaries neighborhood table tiger urban us

Description

The United States Census Bureau regularly releases a geodatabase named TIGER. This dataset contains the 2020 census tracts. Tract areas vary tremendously, but in urban areas are roughly equivalent to a neighborhood. There are just over 85000 polygon features covering the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island areas.

For full technical details on all TIGER 2020 products, see the TIGER technical documentation.

Table Schema

Table Schema

Name Type Description
ALAND DOUBLE

Land Area (square meters)
AWATER DOUBLE

Water Area (square meters)
COUNTYFP STRING

County FIPS Code
FUNCSTAT STRING

Functional Status (S = Statistical)
GEOID STRING

Unique Identifier of Summary Level, Characteristic Iteration, US, State, County, Tract, Block Group Code
INTPTLAT DOUBLE

Internal Point Latitude
INTPTLON DOUBLE

Internal Point Longitude
MTFCC STRING

MAF/TIGER Feature Classification Code
NAME STRING

2020 Census tract name: this is the census tract code converted to an integer or integer plus 2-character decimal if the last two characters of the code are not both zeros.
NAMELSAD STRING

Full Name
STATEFP STRING

State FIPS Code
TRACTCE STRING

Census Tract Code

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

The U.S. Census Bureau offers some of its public data in machine-readable format via an Application Programming Interface (API). All of the content, documentation, code and related materials made available to you through the API are subject to these terms and conditions.

Citations

Citations:

  • For the creation of any reports, publications, new data sets, derived products, or services resulting from the data set, users should cite the US Census Bureau.

Explore with Earth Engine

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.FeatureCollection('TIGER/2020/TRACT');

var visParams = {
  min: 0.0,
  max: 1e7,
  palette: ['d8d9d9', 'aaaaaa', 'b6dfe9', '2ea3f2', '0c71c3']
};

// plotting the water area per polygon
dataset = dataset.map(function (f) {
  return f.set('AWATER', ee.Number.parse(f.get('AWATER')));
});


var image = ee.Image().float().paint(dataset, 'AWATER');

Map.setCenter(-81.99172, 29.74101, 6);
Map.addLayer(ee.Image(1), {min:0, max:1}, 'background');
Map.addLayer(image, visParams, 'TIGER/2020/TRACT');
Map.addLayer(dataset, null, 'for Inspector', false);
Open in Code Editor

Visualize as a FeatureView

A FeatureView is a view-only, accelerated representation of a FeatureCollection. For more details, visit the FeatureView documentation.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var fvLayer = ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer('TIGER/2020/TRACT_FeatureView');

var visParams = {
  opacity: 1,
  color: {
    property: 'AWATER',
    mode: 'linear',
    palette: ['d8d9d9', 'aaaaaa', 'b6dfe9', '2ea3f2', '0c71c3'],
    min: 0,
    max: 1e7
  }
};

fvLayer.setVisParams(visParams);
fvLayer.setName('Water area by US census tract');

Map.setCenter(-73.15, 40.9, 9);
Map.add(fvLayer);
Open in Code Editor
The United States Census Bureau regularly releases a geodatabase named TIGER. This dataset contains the 2020 census tracts. Tract areas vary tremendously, but in urban areas are roughly equivalent to a neighborhood. There are just over 85000 polygon features covering the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and …
TIGER/2020/TRACT, census,city,infrastructure-boundaries,neighborhood,table,tiger,urban,us
2020-01-01T00:00:00Z/2020-01-02T00:00:00Z
-14.69 -180 71.567 -64.435
Google Earth Engine