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Digital Spatial Data

This research guide lists major guides and collections of digital spatial data, organized by the following geographic areas.

California Gnatcatcher Locations

World

  • Data Guides
    • GeoConnections Discovery Portal (Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure) Guide to geospatial data, organizations that provide data, and services provided by Canadian and other international organizations.
    • Geographic Network Explorer (Geography Network) Directory of free and commercial GIS data. Search by placename, data content, and data theme.
    • GIS Data Sources (Decker) 2001 (Ref G 70.212 D44 2001) Provides an introduction to types of GIS data, defining user data needs and sources for locating and obtaining needed data.
    • Mapdex (Kansas Geological Survey) Provides an index of publicly available ArcIMS services comprising approximately 2,300 servers, serving approximately 40,000 map services, and containing approximately 600,000 GIS layers. Users can search by server, service, projection, geography, and layer names. A simple front-end viewer allows easy searching and quick mapping of spatial data. Users can also add data layers into their ArcGIS project.
    • National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (Federal Geographic Data Committee) Searches over 250 spatial data servers that contain digital geographic metadata. Searchable by geographic location, place name, time period, keyword, and data server location.
    • Web Sites for Digital GIS Data (Stanford University Branner Earth Sciences Library)
  • Data Warehouses/Servers
    • Center for International Earth Science Information Network - CIESIN (Columbia University) Specializes in data and applications related to human interactions with the environment.
    • Geo Data Portal (United Nations Environment Programme) Includes data sets used in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report and other environment assessments. The database holds more than 400 variables that are available as national, subregional, regional and global statistics or as geospatial data sets (maps). Topics covered include themes like Freshwater, Population, Forests, Emissions, Climate, Disasters, Health and GDP. Data can be displayed on-the-fly as interactive maps, graphs, data tables or downloaded in different formats.

United States

  • Data Guides
    • Availability of USGS Geospatial Data (US Geological Survey) Contains graphics showing the current availability of selected USGS geospatial data.
    • Comprehensive Guide to State and Nationwide GeoData Clearinghouses for the United States (Directions Magazine) Directory of state clearinghouses and sites that contain nationwide data.
    • EarthExplorer (US Geological Survey) Identify geospatial products available from the US Geological Survey including aerial photography, satellite imagery, digital orthophoto quads, digital line graphs, digital elevation models, digital raster graphics, and other map products. Determine spatial coverage by defining coverage on a map, entering geographic coordinates, or entering a place name.
    • Geodata.gov: Your One Stop for Federal, State & Local Geographic Data (US Geological Survey) Major gateway to geospatial information and data produced under the federal government's Geospatial One-Stop e-government initiative. Content includes data, documents and resources. There are four ways to find content: 1) the Search page lets you search for content by entering search criteria and an area of interest; 2) the Data Category pages allow you to browse a collection of metadata records about specific data themes using 17 predefined data categories; 3) the Current Event or Application topics pages are similar to Data Category pages, except that they emphasize data and related information for special application areas or current events; and 4) the Map Viewer application contains a predefined list of map services which you can add to the Map Viewer or you can also specify the URL of a particular map server to find and browse more map services.
    • Maps and GIS Resources: United States, by State (University of Oregon Libraries) List of major data servers for each state.
    • Pacific Northwest Conservation Assessment Geographical Data Sources (Conservation Biology Institute) Directory of GIS-based data and information useful for conservation planning within the great Pacific Northwest.
    • Starting the Hunt: Guide to Mostly Online and Mostly Free U.S. Geospatial and Attribute Data (Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies) Lists data sites by subject and by state. Also lists international and U.S. general sites.
  • Data Warehouses/Servers
    • Geologic Maps of Western States (US Geological Survey) Links to statewide geological map datasets.
    • Geospatial Data Gateway (U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service) Available data sets include precipitation, TIGER, DRGs, DEMs, NED, DOQs, National Land Cover, and SSURGO (soils).
    • GIS Data (Inforain) Includes over 250 GIS data layers covering the coastal temperate forests of the western United States.
    • GIS Data Depot (Geocommunity) This "supersite" for GIS data includes over one terrabyte of freely downloadable data in a catalog of over 1 million domestic and international datasets. These datasets include nearly all digitally available USGS 24K, 100K, 250K DLG quadrangles, numerous statewide datasets, DEMs, DRGs, DOQs, and satellite imagery. Most of the vector data is available in E00, SHP, MIF, DXF, or DLG SDTS format and the raster data is available in TIFF or .jpeg format.
    • GIS Data Set by State (US Fish and Wildlife Service) Includes links to GIS data sets available from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and from other state and federal agencies.
    • Mapping Professionals (National Atlas of the United States) Includes map layers in shapefile, SDTS, or TIFF formats. All map layers are compiled at scales of 1:2M or 1:2.5M. Most map layers cover the full geographic extent of the United States.
    • USGS Geographic Data Download (US Geological Survey) Includes DEMs, DLGs, Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), Natural Land Cover Data (NLCD), National Elevation Dataset (NED), and National Hydrology Dataset (NHD).
    • webGIS (Lakes Environmental Software) Provides easy to use map interface for downloading DEMs, DLGs,and Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) data.

California

California (Northwestern)