GIS & Geospatial Technologies: Sorted by Type

Types of Data A-Z

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Elevation

Imagery

Gazetteers

LIDAR

Online Mapping

Statistics

Elevation

3DEP LidarExplorer (USGS)
The LidarExplorer was created primarily to enable identification of lidar projects having 3D visualization enabled (via Entwine) - giving users a mechanism to visualize the Lidar through web-based 3D viewers like Potree. Currently, not all the Lidar published by the USGS is available in the Entwine Point Tile (EPT) format. Downloads for the DEM products and Source products are provided in such a way to easily compare coverage and download sizes based on a user-defined Area of Interest (AOI). Finally, LidarExplorer provides a mechanism for deriving products from Lidar using cloud processing capabilities that take advantage of the publically available EPT Lidar data and the Point Data Abstraction Library (PDAL).
ASTER Global DEM - 15 meter resolution
You can download, for free, from NASA, the global ASTER DEM data here. You must register to do so!
California Seafloor Mapping Project (CSMP)
The California Seafloor Mapping Project (CSMP) has high-resolution geologic and habitat base map series covering all of California's 14,500 km2 state waters out to the 3 mile limit,
USGS LiDAR
Learn about LIDAR, links to download data U.S. LiDAR data.
EarthExplorer - USGS
This is a good place to look for imagery from the USGS including Landsat, AVHRR and aerial photography from now and the past.
Open Topography
Provides access to high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data for scientific, environmental, engineering and planning purposes. A great resource for accessing global LiDAR, DEM products. You can also generate derivative products such as hillshade and slope. You can also clip the data to return only an area of interest.
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
Download data from SRTM here. Version 2 is available- it comes with the water bodies and coastlines.
SRTM 30-Meter Tile Downloader (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission)
This interface attempts to ease the pain of downloading 30-meter resolution elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. Click on yellow tiles to download their corresponding data. A NASA Earthdata login is required to download the files.
SRTM 90m DEM Digital Elevation Database
The NASA Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) has provided digital elevation data (DEMs) for over 80% of the globe. The SRTM data is available as 3 arc second (approx. 90m resolution) DEMs. A 1 arc second data product was also produced but is not available for all countries. The SRTM 90m DEM’s have a resolution of 90m at the equator, and are provided in mosaicked 5 deg x 5 deg tiles for easy download and use. All are produced from a seamless dataset to allow easy mosaicking. These are available in both ArcInfo ASCII and GeoTiff format to facilitate their ease of use in a variety of image processing and GIS applications. Data can be downloaded using a browser or accessed directly from the FTP site.
The National Map (USGS)
The National Map Viewer (TNM Viewer) is the one-stop destination for visualizing all the latest National Map data and deliver topographic information for the Nation. The National Map supports data download, digital and print versions of topographic maps, geospatial data services, and online viewing. The geographic information available from The National Map includes boundaries, elevation, geographic names, hydrography, land cover, orthoimagery, structures, and transportation
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Imagery

California Coastal Records Project -- Aerial Photographs of the California Coastline
This site has over 40,000 images of the California coast from Oregon to Mexico. Some sites have historic images from 1972 and there is a feature on the site to do a time comparison. May be useful in coastal GIS projects as a supplement rather than image analysis source.
Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (Sentinel)
The Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem provides complete, free and open access to Sentinel missions (Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-5P) products via file downloads, APIs or you can access in their native cloud based analysis platforms.
EarthExplorer - USGS
This is a good place to look for imagery from the USGS including Landsat, AVHRR and aerial photography from now and the past.
EROS - Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (USGS)
EROS is home to the world's largest collection of remotely sensed images of the Earth’s land surface and the primary source of Landsat satellite images and data products. NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is also located at EROS. Use the links on this site to explore and access the data holdings.
HistoricAerials.com
Historic aerial imagery of some areas of the United States ranging from the 1960s to 2005. There is a tool to compare imagery across multiple years. This is free imagery, but comes with an extensive watermark on it.
Historical Aerial Photos - Cal State University San Bernardino
This online web GIS will allow you to find watersheds in California with some historic aerial photographs. Zoom in (but not too close) to your area of interest and then use the Query tool to see what results are in your area.
MODIS Satellite Imagery - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
The MODIS instrument operates on both the Terra and Aqua spacecraft. It has a viewing swath width of 2,330 km and views the entire surface of the Earth every one to two days. Its detectors measure 36 spectral bands between 0.405 and 14.385 µm, and it acquires data at three spatial resolutions -- 250m, 500m, and 1,000m. The many data products derived from MODIS observations describe features of the land, oceans and the atmosphere that can be used for studies of processes and trends on local to global scales. MODIS products are available from several sources, listed here.
NOAA Climate Data Online (CDO)
Climate Data Online (CDO) provides free access to National Climatic Data Center (NCDC's) archive of global historical weather and climate data in addition to station history information. These data include quality controlled daily, monthly, seasonal, and yearly measurements of temperature, precipitation, wind, and degree days as well as radar data and 30-year Climate Normals.
NOAA Emergency Response Imagery
The imagery posted on this site was acquired by the NOAA Remote Sensing Division. Imagery can be found for storms or hurricanes dating back to 2003
Open Topography
Provides access to high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data for scientific, environmental, engineering and planning purposes. A great resource for accessing global LiDAR, DEM products. You can also generate derivative products such as hillshade and slope. You can also clip the data to return only an area of interest.

Planet
This resource is brought to you by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). Planet provides daily satellite images of the Earth’s land surfaces and coastal areas. Natural color, near infra-red, and other multi-channel imagery products are available with 5m, 3.7m and 50cm ground pixel resolution. Images are exportable to GIS systems or can be viewed and analyzed using Planet's website and tools. PlanetScope (3.7m) satellite images are available daily, starting in 2014. SkySat (50cm) images are available for selected areas and time periods, starting in 2016. RapidEye (5m) is from 2009-2020.
New users must first complete registration form

The National Map (USGS)
The National Map Viewer (TNM Viewer) is the one-stop destination for visualizing all the latest National Map data and deliver topographic information for the Nation. The National Map supports data download, digital and print versions of topographic maps, geospatial data services, and online viewing. The geographic information available from The National Map includes boundaries, elevation, geographic names, hydrography, land cover, orthoimagery, structures, and transportation
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Gazetteers

Historic County Borders Project (UK)
The Historic County Borders Project digitized the borders of the historic counties of the UK and has made them freely available for public and commercial use.
Geographical Names of Canada
This site allows you to query approximately 350,000 Canadian geographic place and physical feature names by name, coordinates or other unique codes.
GeoNames
An integrated geographical data resource with information on cities of 1000, 5000 and 15,000, postal codes, feature data and more. All data is free with a Creative Commons license.
GNIS - United States Board on Geographic Names
This gazetteer is a key resource to find the official name, latitude and longitude of domestic, foreign, Antarctic or undersea features. Note that if you are looking for foreign names, the link on the GNIS will take you to the GNS (also available as a link on this guide).
GNS - GEOnet Names Server
This is a key resource for finding non-United States geographic feature names.
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LIDAR

California LiDAR Status Map
A status map for California indicating the status of 3DEP compliant lidar and where other, non-3DEP lidar may also be available.
Open Topography
Provides access to high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data for scientific, environmental, engineering and planning purposes. A great resource for accessing global LiDAR, DEM products. You can also generate derivative products such as hillshade and slope. You can also clip the data to return only an area of interest.
UNAVCO
UNAVCO promotes research by providing access to data that our community of geodetic scientists uses for quantifying the motions of rock, ice and water that are monitored by a variety of sensor types at or near the Earth's surface. Data types include GPS/GNSS, SAR and Lidar/SfM, strain and seismic borehole data, and Tropospheric data
U.S. Interagency Elevation Inventory
The United States Interagency Elevation Inventory is a nationwide listing of known publicly available high-accuracy topographic and bathymetric source elevation data for the United States and its territories. The inventory provides a single resource for information about all known completed and in-progress broad-area public domain elevation data. The inventory displays data set boundaries and provides information about the elevation data but does not host the data itself. If available, links to access the data, metadata, and reports are included.
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Online Mapping

AfricaMap
This Harvard-based online resource offers a way to interact and download datasets with respect to Africa. Their stated goals are to allow you to "interact with the best available public data for Africa, see the whole of Africa yet also zoom in to particular places, accumulate both contemporary and historical data supplied by researchers and make it permanently accessible online, and work collaboratively across disciplines and organizations with spatial information about Africa"
Association of Religion Data Archives
Here you can access online maps of religion in both the United States and worldwide. There are statistics and lists by county and denomination for other information, and the description of the sources can lead you to more information.
CensusScope: Census 2000 Data, Charts, Maps, and Rankings
Just as the title says, this online mapping and trend visualization tool helps to investigate US demographic trends.
City of Los Angeles - ZIMAS - Zoning Information and Map Access System
This is an online mapping resource for the City of Los Angeles, created by their Department of City Planning. It is designed to provide zoning related information for specific properties. You CANNOT download data from here.
http://crimereports.com/
ECAI - Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
A very interesting initiative based at UC Berkeley using place as an organizing element for cultural information.
Google Maps Mania
Blog devoted to Google Maps mashups. Related to GIS and shows the creativity of the Internet community!
GOS - Geospatial One Stop
A US government portal for geospatial data and information. Can sometimes download GIS files, sometimes only do online mapping. Good for finding the agencies that do GIS data for a particular topic, but can be a little bit frustrating if you are wanting
HealthMap | Global disease alert map
A project by Harvard-MIT's Division of Health Sciences & Technology, this online mapping site allows you to map diseases across the globe. Very interesting and shows how geography can display patterns in a way that other forms of information cannot.
NatureServe: Get Data
This non-profit conservation organization is a partnership of different entities providing extensive GIS data for animals and plants. There is downloadable data as well as online mapping of species distributions.

PolicyMap
Note: Institution-wide access ends 6/30/25. PolicyMap is a U.S. national data and mapping tool that combines a curated, comprehensive geographic data library with simple, robust mapping and analytics tools. University faculty, researchers, and students use it to create maps of up to five layers, export trend charts with key benchmarks, download data for use in other tools, generate on-the-fly reports and upload your own data to view it with ours.

San Diego Mammal Atlas - San Diego Natural History Museum, Birds and Mammals Department
A product of the San Diego Natural History Museum, the Mammal Atlas uses GIS data to show mammal occurrence records.
San Diego Plant Atlas Species Mapping
A product of the San Diego Natural History Museum, this online mapping site allows you to pick a plant and map it using a Google Maps application.
San Diego Regional Crime MAPS
An online crime mapping website from ARJIS (Automated Regional Justice Information System. The crime mapping application allows you to select a location, incident type and time period to map. Map can be exported and data can be copied/pasted into a table to then be used in a GIS.

Social Explorer
1790-present. This site combines data from the U.S. Census of Population and Housing & the American Community Survey (ACS) with a user friendly interface, allowing the creation of maps & statistical tables. Census Tract boundaries are available back to 1940. Now also includes data on U.S. elections, business pattern, environmental summary, health, religion, and crime; the UK and Canadian censuses; Irish religious data; World Development Indicators, and EuroStat. Presidential, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election data comes from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and is available for map presentation only.

The National Map (USGS)
The National Map Viewer (TNM Viewer) is the one-stop destination for visualizing all the latest National Map data and deliver topographic information for the Nation. The National Map supports data download, digital and print versions of topographic maps, geospatial data services, and online viewing. The geographic information available from The National Map includes boundaries, elevation, geographic names, hydrography, land cover, orthoimagery, structures, and transportation
UC Atlas of Global Inequality
The Atlas of Global Inequality explores aspects of inequality using online, downloadable maps and graphics. All materials can be reproduced without charge if they are attributed to the UC Atlas of Global Inequality.
Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before
A great site that has a collection of world maps where the countries are sized according to the subject they are displaying i.e. fuel exports, incomes, violence, religion, education and the like.
ZeeMaps
Free tool to do online geocoding of lists. Very easy to use. Requires a free registration but handy for displaying information (and geocoding it) quickly and easily.
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Statistics

Association of Religion Data Archives
Here you can access online maps of religion in both the United States and worldwide. There are statistics and lists by county and denomination for other information, and the description of the sources can lead you to more information.
Bureau of Labor Statistics - Quarterly Census of Employment & Wages Map Application
Quarterly count of employment and wages reported by employers covering more than 95 percent of U.S. jobs, available at the county, MSA, state and national levels by industry. No shapefile, but can get the data and join to an existing gis file.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics - Research and Innovative Technology Administration
This site has transportation tables that are included in the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP). Tables are downloadable and then usable in GIS with the FIPS identifier.
Crimereports.com/
Geostatistical Mapping - a practical guide
This free ebook by Tomislav Hengl provides a great guide to geostatics and mapping using open source tools.
InstantAtlas - data visualization software | Present data on interactive maps
This software allows you to create your own maps and visualizations of your own data...it looks like it has great potential but I can't vouch for it personally!
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI)
The official mapping and GIS agency of Mexico. Their website is in Spanish and offers links to census products and GIS data. If you are a part of UC San Diego, we have own a digital collection of Mexico topo maps that you can use, so just contact us in the Geisel Library building!
R Project for Statistical Computing
A computing language and an "environment within which statistical techniques are implemented". Becoming increasingly used in conjunction with GIS analysis.
RITA - Bureau of Transportation Statistics
This site is devoted to creating, developing, managing and disseminating transportation statistical knowledge. While it does not have GIS data, it has tabular information about transportation (aviation, ferries, trucking, border crossings) that could be used in GIS.
SANDAG - GIS & Data Warehouse
Excellent site for free GIS data specific to San Diego County. Also created some new visualizations using GIS data that are interesting to see. To get to the Data Warehouse, go to the left side navigation under "Resources" and choose "Demographics and
Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) - GIS & Data Services
The Data & GIS Services Program promotes data sharing and updating to enhance southern California region-wide GIS data standardization and helps SCAG maintain effective working relationships with its member cities and key stakeholder agencies. Currently 79 local jurisdictions and two partner agencies.
U.S. Census Bureau (data.census.gov)
Data.census.gov, a product of the Census Bureau and provides data from the 2010 and 2020 decennial census and the American Community Survey about households, education, income, homeownership, business, and more. (NHGIS is a resources geared towards historical census data).
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