Maps
Terrain analysis — slope, aspect, and contours
Three overlays generated from open elevation data around your trails: slope shading for steepness, aspect for which way the ground faces, and labeled contour lines. Where to switch them on, how to read them, why they stop at the edge of your network, and what to check when one paints nothing.
Terrain analysis puts three read-only layers on your maps: slope shading, aspect shading, and contour lines. All three are generated from open US elevation data (USGS 3DEP) around your own trail lines, which is why they work offline and why they stop at the edge of your network.
Turning the overlays on
Every dashboard map has a layers button in the top-right corner — the stacked-tiles icon. Tap it to open the layers panel.
The panel has up to two sections:
- Base map — the background style. Mapbox-powered maps offer Outdoor, Satellite and Streets; the TrailsIQ map offers TrailsIQ, Outdoor and Minimal. The style you pick is remembered on that device and comes back on your next visit.
- Overlays — Hillshading and Contours, alongside the other map layers. Free on every plan.
- Terrain analysis — Slope and Aspect. Shown on every map engine, because neither depends on the basemap provider.
Tap any row to toggle it. A tick means on; a spinner means the layer is still fetching. Your choices apply to the map you are looking at and follow you between dashboard pages, since the dashboard shares one map.
The terrain overlays are drawn under the base map's roads, buildings and labels, and over its ground colors. Contours crossing a road would otherwise read as the road running under the hill, and slope shading would simply paint over it.
They are also toned to the base style you are on. Hillshading is strongest on the saturated TrailsIQ style, which has the color to take it, and progressively lighter on Outdoor and Minimal, where the same shading would be the loudest thing on screen. On Minimal the contours are gray rather than brown for the same reason: that style exists so your own trail colors carry the map, and brown lines pull the eye straight off them. Nothing to set — switching base style re-tones the overlays with it.
The Field App's map-layer sheet has the same two sections and a few rows the dashboard does not — 3-D terrain, and the basemap-detail toggles below.
Hide basemap trails
In the Field App's map-layer sheet, and on by default.
Every base map draws its own idea of the paths in your area, taken from OpenStreetMap — and it is regularly out of date, mis-routed, or a right of way your organization does not look after. Drawn in the same brown, at the same weight, beside your own trail lines, it is genuinely hard to tell which line is the authority.
Your organization's trails are. So the base map's paths are hidden, along with their names, and what you see is what you maintain.
Turn it off when you want the wider network back — checking a connection to a neighboring system, or a right of way that runs off yours. It is remembered per device.
Hillshading sits alongside them in both places, and is worth telling apart from the three above.
Slope and aspect are the priced pair. We bake them as image tiles per trail, store them on our own disk, and include them in offline downloads; they are the terrain-analysis feature your plan may or may not include.
Contours and hillshading are on every plan, including Free. Contours are drawn on your device from elevation data we already hold for every organization, so they work wherever your trails are. Hillshading is read live rather than generated, which is why it needs a connection and cannot be downloaded — the one way it is weaker than the rest.
That is also why it switches itself off when you lose signal, and its row disappears from the sheet until the connection returns. It does not switch itself back on — the row comes back and you tap it. The Field App's 3-D terrain works the same way, for the same reason.
On a plain background
If your organization renders on the plain green background — over its monthly map-load allowance, or put there deliberately — hillshading and contours are switched on for you the first time, on the dashboard and in the Field App both.
With no basemap underneath, those two layers are the map: hillshading gives the ground its shape, contours give it height, and together they read as a topographic map rather than as a basemap that failed to load. Seeded once and remembered, so switching either off is a choice that sticks.
On the TrailsIQ map
All four overlays work there too, and it is the combination worth reaching for: relief and height on top of roads, buildings and paths reads as a proper topographic map. See The TrailsIQ map.
Note that that engine draws a real base map around your trails and the plain background only beyond them — so on one screen you may have basemap under the overlays in some places and background in others. That is expected.
Slope shading
Colors the ground by steepness, so you can see where a line is going to be a problem before you walk it.
| Color | Grade |
|---|---|
| Green | 15% and under |
| Amber | 15–25% |
| Red | 25–35% |
| Magenta | Over 35% |
The thresholds match the ones used elsewhere in TrailsIQ for sustainable-grade checks, so a stretch that reads red here is the same stretch the planner flags.
Most useful for siting new trail — reading a hillside for a workable line — and for explaining to somebody why the direct route is not the one you built.
Aspect shading
Colors the ground by which way the slope faces:
| Color | Facing |
|---|---|
| Blue | North |
| Yellow | East |
| Red | South |
| Purple | West |
Aspect is a drying and freezing map. In the northern hemisphere a north-facing slope holds snow and stays wet weeks longer than the south-facing slope on the other side of the same ridge. If you are sequencing spring opening, planning where mud season bites first, or working out why one trail is always the problem one, aspect answers it faster than walking the ground.
Contour lines
Standard elevation contours, drawn in brown — or in gray on the Minimal base style, where brown would be the only warm thing on the map. Every fifth line is an index contour, drawn heavier and labeled with its elevation.
The interval tightens as you zoom in, so a wide view stays readable instead of turning into brown spaghetti:
| Zoom | Metric | Imperial |
|---|---|---|
| 17+ | 2 m | 5 ft |
| 16 | 5 m | 10 ft |
| 15 | 10 m | 20 ft |
| 14 | 20 m | 40 ft |
The imperial intervals match USGS 7.5-minute quad conventions, so a printout reads the way a paper topo does.
When contours are on, the layers panel states the interval currently in use — "Contours every 20 ft" — so you never have to infer it from the labels.
Contour units
Contour labels follow your own unit preference, not the organization's.
The rule is the one used everywhere in TrailsIQ:
- Profile → Distance units set to Metric or Imperial wins outright.
- Set to Auto (the default), it falls through to the organization's country in Settings → Organization details. The United States, Liberia and Myanmar resolve to imperial; everywhere else is metric.
So if your map shows feet on an organization you think of as metric, the usual cause is your own profile being set to Imperial — which outranks the org by design. The layers panel names which of the two is in force: "unit from your profile's distance units" or "unit from your organization's country". Whichever it names is the setting to change.
Where the overlays exist
Terrain tiles are generated around your trail lines, in a corridor either side of them — not across your whole region.
Two consequences:
- Ground with no trail near it has no overlay. Blank areas between networks are expected, not broken. The layers panel says so when an overlay is on and in range: "Baked around your trails — blank ground has none yet."
- A brand-new trail has no terrain until it is generated. Generation runs automatically in the background when a trail is created or its geometry changes. It is usually quick, but it is not instant.
- Planning on bare ground generates terrain for it too. Drawing or suggesting a line in the planner over an area with no overlays queues generation for that area, the same as saving a trail there does. The overlays appear on their own a few minutes later — the map picks them up without a reload, so there is nothing to press and no reason to keep switching the toggle off and on.
The overlays start at zoom level 14 and get finer as you zoom in. Below that nothing paints, because nothing is generated at those levels — a wide view would need an unusable number of tiles. The layers panel tells you when this is the reason: "Zoom in to level 14 or closer to see these — you are at 11.3."
Offline
Contours and slope shading can be downloaded, because we generate them rather than license them. They are a category in the offline download sheet — see Offline downloads.
This matters more than it first appears. On a provider-backed engine, base map tiles cannot be downloaded for licensing reasons, so an offline map there has a plain background. Contours and slope shading are what turn that plain background back into terrain you can read and navigate by.
On the TrailsIQ map the base map itself comes down with them, so an offline map there has roads, paths, water and place names under the terrain as well.
Downloaded terrain is used even when you are online, so it never waits on a weak signal.
Plans
- Free — hillshading and contour lines.
- Core, Pro, Enterprise — those two plus slope and aspect shading.
Hillshading and contours are not part of terrain analysis and are never withheld. The organizations most in need of shape and height on their map are the ones with the least else on it, and neither layer costs anything to serve — hillshading reads open elevation tiles, and contours are computed on your device from data already collected for every plan.
Elevation data is collected for every organization regardless of plan, including Free. That is deliberate: the underlying elevation is shared across everyone in an area rather than being per-customer, so it costs nothing extra to have it ready. If you upgrade, the overlays appear immediately — there is no waiting for anything to be generated and no backfill to request.
On a plan without terrain analysis the slope and aspect controls are still shown, dimmed, with the plan that would unlock them. They cannot be switched on — tapping one does nothing — but the descriptions and color legends stay readable, because those explain what the overlays actually do better than a price list can. Contours sit with hillshading among the ordinary map overlays instead, since both are available to everyone. If your plan already includes terrain analysis and the slope and aspect rows are missing entirely, the cause is the organization-level switch rather than the plan: see Settings › Terrain.
I turned one on and nothing happened
In order of likelihood:
- You are zoomed out past level 14. The panel says so, with your current zoom. Zoom in.
- It is still loading. The row shows a spinner until the tiles land. On a slow connection this can take a few seconds.
- There is no trail near where you are looking. Coverage follows your trail lines. Pan to a trail.
- The trail is new. Generation runs in the background after a trail is created or edited; give it a few minutes.
- Your plan is Free. Hillshading and contours work. Slope and aspect are shown dimmed with the plan needed to unlock them, and will not switch on until then.
If the shading is missing specifically when offline, use Check downloaded terrain in the download sheet before reporting it — it distinguishes several faults that look identical on the map.