Political Township Boundaries in Iowa for 2010, derived from Census Data

currently iowa townships are not actually classified as civil townships but as special district governments special district governments exist to provide only one or a limited number ofdesignated functions and with sufficient administrative and fiscal autonomy to qualify as separate governments iowa townships today provide governmental functions that are outside the realm of both county and municipal authority the three main functions of iowa townships are fire protection cemetery management and fence maintenance and boundary dispute resolution within the township the tiger line files are shapefiles and related database files dbf that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the u s census bureau s master address file topologically integrated geographic encoding and referencing maf tiger database mtdb the mtdb represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts however each tiger line file is designed to stand alone as an independent data set or they can be combined to cover the entire nation county subdivisions are the primary divisions of counties and their equivalent entities for the reporting of census bureau data and they include legally minor civil divisions mcds and statistical census county divisions ccds and unorganized territories for the 2010 census the legal mcds are the primary governmental and or administrative divisions of counties in 29 states and puerto rico tennessee changed from having ccds for census 2000 to having mcds for the 2010 census in mcd states where no mcd exists or is not defined the census bureau creates statistical unorganized territories to complete coverage the entire area of the united states puerto rico and the island areas is covered by county subdivisions the boundaries of all 2010 census legal mcds are as of january 1 2010 as reported through the census bureau s boundary and annexation survey bas for the 2010 census ccds or their equivalents are delineated in 21 states the boundaries of all 2010 census statistical ccds were delineated as part of the census bureau s participant statistical areas program psap