Data Sources & Attribution
Reloquent — RLQ API
Last updated: 2026-08-02
Reloquent’s products draw on the sources below: the RLQ API compiles enrichment from them, and the RMT map-tile API serves tiles derived from a subset of them. Their licenses flow through to you. When you display, publish, or redistribute enriched results, you must keep the attributions marked “Required” below. Attributions marked “Customary” are not legally mandatory (the data is public domain) but we ask that you include them where practical. This obligation is also stated in the Terms of Service §7 and the Acceptable Use Policy.
A short, copy-paste credit line covering everything is provided at the end.
Public-domain U.S. government sources
These are works of the U.S. federal government and are in the public domain. No permission or license is required; attribution is customary.
| Source (RLQ key) | Provider | What it provides | Attribution |
|---|---|---|---|
USGS GNIS (gnis) | U.S. Geological Survey | Named natural and cultural features | Customary |
USFS National Forests (usfs_forests) | U.S. Forest Service | Forest/grassland boundaries | Customary |
USFS Trails (usfs_trails) | U.S. Forest Service | Trails | Customary |
USFS MVUM Roads (usfs_mvum_roads) | U.S. Forest Service | Motor-vehicle-use roads | Customary |
USFS MVUM Trails (usfs_mvum_trails) | U.S. Forest Service | Motor-vehicle-use trails | Customary |
USFS Recreation Sites (usfs_rec_sites) | U.S. Forest Service | Campgrounds, trailheads, etc. | Customary |
USGS Protected Areas / PAD-US (padus) | U.S. Geological Survey | Protected-area boundaries & management | Customary |
BLM Surface Management Agency (blm_sma) | Bureau of Land Management | Managing agency per parcel | Customary |
BLM Recreation Sites (blm_rec_sites) | Bureau of Land Management | Recreation points | Customary |
BLM Recreation Areas (blm_rec_areas) | Bureau of Land Management | Special recreation management areas | Customary |
BLM National Monuments (blm_monuments) | Bureau of Land Management | National monuments | Customary |
BLM Wilderness Study Areas (blm_wsa) | Bureau of Land Management | Wilderness study areas | Customary |
BLM Wilderness (blm_wilderness) | Bureau of Land Management | Designated wilderness | Customary |
BLM Field Offices (blm_field_offices) | Bureau of Land Management | Field-office boundaries | Customary |
BLM National Trails (blm_national_trails) | Bureau of Land Management | National-system trails | Customary |
BLM Wild & Scenic Rivers (blm_wild_scenic_rivers) | Bureau of Land Management | Wild & scenic rivers | Customary |
BLM Ground Transportation Linear Features (blm_gtlf) | Bureau of Land Management | Roads/trails with surface & OHV class | Customary |
US Wilderness Areas (govunits_wilderness) | Multi-agency (USFS/BLM/NPS/FWS) | All federal wilderness areas | Customary |
NHD Waterbodies (nhd_waterbodies) | U.S. Geological Survey | Lakes, ponds, reservoirs | Customary |
NHD Flowlines (nhd_flowlines) | U.S. Geological Survey | Rivers, streams, canals | Customary |
Census TIGER States (tiger_states) | U.S. Census Bureau | State boundaries | Customary |
Census TIGER Counties (tiger_counties) | U.S. Census Bureau | County boundaries | Customary |
Census TIGER Places (tiger_places) | U.S. Census Bureau | City/town/CDP boundaries | Customary |
EPA Level 3 Ecoregions (ecoregions_epa_l3) | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | Ecological regions (contiguous U.S.) | Customary |
USGS 3DEP (terrain_elevation, terrain_slope — U.S. tier) | U.S. Geological Survey | Ground elevation and slope/aspect, 1/3-arc-second DEM | Customary |
USGS/MRLC Annual NLCD (terrain_landcover) | U.S. Geological Survey / MRLC | Land-cover class, CONUS (Annual NLCD Collection 1.2, vintage 2025; also marked CC0 1.0) | Customary |
Suggested customary credit: “Includes data from the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Census Bureau, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (public domain).”
OpenStreetMap — attribution required (ODbL 1.0)
| Source (RLQ key) | What it provides |
|---|---|
OSM Roads (osm_roads) | Road network: name, surface, class, access |
OSM Amenities (osm_amenities) | Points of interest: shops, fuel, food, etc. |
OpenStreetMap data is licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0, which requires attribution. Whenever results derived from OSM are shown, you must credit ”© OpenStreetMap contributors.”
Produced work vs. derivative database (our position). RLQ performs point/line spatial queries and returns selected feature attributes as enrichment results — a “Produced Work” under the ODbL, which carries the attribution requirement but not the share-alike obligation. We do not distribute a copy or extract of the OSM database itself, and your enriched results are produced works, not a derivative database. Accordingly, downstream users must attribute OSM but are not required to open-license their own data.
Overture Maps — attribution requested (CDLA Permissive 2.0)
| Source (RLQ key) | What it provides |
|---|---|
Overture Places (overture_places) | Points of interest: name, category, address, contact |
Overture Places is published by the Overture Maps Foundation under the Community Data License Agreement – Permissive, Version 2.0 (CDLA-Permissive 2.0). Its attribution requirements are minimal, and computational “Results” are generally exempt from the requirement to redistribute the license text; nonetheless we credit ”© Overture Maps Foundation.” Per-record licensing (confirmed 2026-06-08). Overture Places licensing is per-source, not per-theme: most sources are under CDLA-Permissive-2.0, but Foursquare-sourced records are under Apache 2.0 (and AllThePlaces under CC0 1.0) — all commercial-permissive. Because RLQ does not surface the per-record source, it takes the conservative, always-safe approach: whenever any Overture Places record is returned, the enrichment output carries both the Overture credit and the Foursquare Apache 2.0 notice. You must preserve both when you display or redistribute results that include Overture data.
WWF / RESOLVE Ecoregions — attribution required (CC BY 4.0)
| Source (RLQ key) | What it provides |
|---|---|
WWF Ecoregions (ecoregions_wwf) | Biome, realm, and named ecological zone (global) |
Cleared for the paid API with attribution. The dataset actually ingested into
the ecoregions.wwf table is RESOLVE Ecoregions2017 (Dinerstein et al., 2017
— 846 ecoregions, columns eco_name/biome_name/realm), published under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which
permits commercial use with attribution and carries no NonCommercial restriction
and no share-alike. Confirmed against the dataset’s own publisher
(ecoregions.appspot.com, “Licensed under CC-BY 4.0”) and independently
corroborated by the Google Earth Engine catalog and UNEP-WCMC metadata.
This is a different dataset from the older “Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World” (Olson et al., 2001 — ~825 ecoregions), which is the one commonly distributed under CC BY-NC. An earlier draft of this page assumed the Olson 2001 dataset; the ingested data is the commercial-friendly 2017 RESOLVE version.
Required attribution: “Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0)”, ideally with
the citation Dinerstein, E., et al. (2017), “An Ecoregion-Based Approach to
Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm,” BioScience 67(6):534–545, DOI
10.1093/biosci/bix014. Full analysis: Rich Location Query/docs/data-source-licensing.md §4.2.
Copernicus GLO-30 DEM — attribution required when it contributed (ESA licence)
| Source (RLQ key) | What it provides |
|---|---|
Copernicus GLO-30 (terrain_elevation, terrain_slope — worldwide fallback tier) | Ground elevation outside U.S. 3DEP coverage (30 m) |
Elevation and slope are served from USGS 3DEP inside the United States and fall
back to the ESA Copernicus GLO-30 DEM elsewhere, under the
COP-DEM-GLO-30-F “Full, Free & Open” data licence — commercial use
permitted, no share-alike, but a specific credit is required whenever GLO-30
data actually contributed. RLQ tells you when that is: the credit appears in a
response’s rlq.attribution.required[] (JSON) / <rlq:required> (GPX) if and
only if copernicus_glo30 served a value somewhere in that job (a U.S.-only job
that never fell back stays credit-free for terrain). Whenever it appears, keep
it:
Required attribution (when present in a response): “produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved”
Map tiles (RMT) — layer attribution
RMT serves map tiles derived from the sources below. Your application must display the attribution our map styles carry (MapLibre renders it automatically via the attribution control; do not disable or obscure it).
| Tile layer | Derived from | Attribution required |
|---|---|---|
Base map (v3) | OpenStreetMap (ODbL 1.0), OpenMapTiles schema (CC-BY 4.0) | Yes — © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors |
Contours, terrain (contours-*, terrain-rgb) | Copernicus GLO-30 DEM (ESA licence) | Yes — the Copernicus notice shown in the section above |
| Public lands, MVUM, GTLF, native lands | PAD-US (USGS), USFS, BLM, US Census TIGER | US public domain — credit appreciated |
OpenStreetMap data is licensed under the ODbL; maps rendered from RMT tiles
are produced works, and the © OpenStreetMap contributors credit is the
required attribution. If you redistribute the tile data itself (rather than
rendered maps), the ODbL’s share-alike terms apply to you directly.
One-line combined credit
For UIs with limited space, a single combined credit such as the following satisfies the required attributions:
Location data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), © Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA 2.0, includes Foursquare Open Source Places data under Apache 2.0), Ecoregions 2017 © RESOLVE (CC BY 4.0), and public-domain sources from USGS, USFS, BLM, U.S. Census Bureau, and EPA. Enriched via Reloquent. Map tiles © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
When a response’s attribution.required[] also carries the Copernicus GLO-30
credit (non-U.S. elevation/slope), append that credit as well — it is
conditional, so it is not baked into the one-liner above.