GIS & Geospatial Technologies: Sorted by Source

This site is maintained by the Planning Data & Systems Department of Campus Planning at UC San Diego. There is building information, GIS campus maps, 'neighborhood' plans of campus, CAD drawings, and GIS campus maps. Much content needs a password so contact them directly for access.

The California State Geoportal is a centralized geographic open data portal, which includes authoritative data and applications from a multitude of California state entities. These State entities cover many topics including Water, Health, Energy, Environment, Transportation, Land Use, Boundaries, Geology, Wildlife, Education, Economy and Fire.

A very interesting initiative based at UC Berkeley using place as an organizing element for cultural information.

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.

Homepage for UC Berkeley's Earth Sciences & Map Library. You'll find a link to access to their GeoData@UC Berkeley data repository and a guide of GIS data resources.

The home page of the agricultural GIS program at UC Davis.

UC Davis Libraries homepage for GIS and maps. States the GIS resources available at UC Davis and has a list of other campus entities using GIS.

UC Irvine's GIS homepage. Has a good list of California-specific resources which would be relevant for GIS, as well as a list of GIS data resources available at UCI.

UC Riverside's home page for maps and GIS services

Run by renowned Michael Goodchild and self described as: "Spatial@ucsb is an innovative university-wide resource and research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Its mission is to facilitate the integration of spatial thinking into processes for learning and discovery in the natural, social, and behavioral sciences, to promote excellence in engineering and applied sciences, and to enhance creativity in the arts and humanities."

Created by the GIS gurus at UC Santa Barbara, this resource has tutorials for starting out with GIS.

The homepage for UC Santa Cruz' GIS lab.

UCLA Libraries GIS homepage.

Created by librarians at UC Irvine, this guide has information about GIS and links to data sources and education programs for GIS in California.

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."

Centralized GIS organization for the California State University system. Appears to be a good model of coordination across a large distributed campus system.

An excellent portal into data regarding climate change, natural disasters, Latin America, the Hindu Kush area and poverty mapping/data. Take some time to explore their spatial data servers and databases as there is excellent information there.

A very rich website with lots of GIS data from Columbia University portals such as CIESIN (Center for International Earth Science Information Network), SEDAC (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center), and the World Data Center for Human Interactions.

A very interesting initiative based at UC Berkeley using place as an organizing element for cultural information.

Stanford's GIS homepage

Created by Harvard, this data portal will get you free access to much GIS data and imagery for Haiti during the relief/crisis period following the January 2010 earthquake.

This is a great resource to find over 6,500 raster and vector layers of GIS data from around the globe as well as many georeferenced historic maps. You can search by metadata, by location, type of data and topic.

This very cool site and project " is a collaborative research and educational platform for traveling back in time to explore the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment". It uses Google technologies and explores the digital humanities in a geographic fashion. Check it out!

This site, based at University of Redlands, is the place to come for research, ideas, teaching, projects, resources and information on thinking and learning spatially.

A listing of various tools developed for marine GIS from OSU's Davey Jones Locker Lab (aka. Dawn Wright, a leading GIS marine scientist).

From OSU's Davey Jones' Locker, this is a great place to start any marine/coastal GIS project. Here you will find the full spectrum of links for agencies, bibliographies, conferences, data, labs, software tools and more.

This is a very comprehensive list of where to go to find GIS data by state, country or theme and was created by the GIS Services staff at MIT.

This site contains historic data regarding the Tijuana River watershed and the October 2003 San Diego Wildfires. File formats are Arc/Info export files and shapefiles respectively. It was previously hosted by the SDSU Dept. of Geography.

As part of the Department of Geography, this site has links to the departmental centers, lab facilities and data resources at SDSU.

SFSU's GISc homepage.

Very good list of GIS data links as well as a list of all GIS clearinghouses by state.

This site from the University of Redlands has case studies, data sources tools and much more to help one understand the spatial decision process, how to teach it, what is involved and what some of the key resources are.

Stanford's GIS homepage.

A great resource created by Amanda Henley, GIS Librarian, which contains print and video tutorials for common tasks such as creating a shapefile from lat/long, geocoding, joining tables, using American FactFinder and more.

Created by the University of Arkansas, this is a very good compiled list of data and attribute resources for the globe and the United States in particular. A good place to "start the hunt" as stated by Stephan Pollard.

Excellent collection of Hawaiian aerial photographs and good links into Hawaiian, Pacific region and Asia/Australia GIS data. There is also available a set of Hawaii Historical Topographical Quadrangle Maps from 1910-1933.

This site contains links to gis data, tutorials, and guides to online mapping tools, address matching resources and gazetters.

A service offered for free to "non-profits, academics and government resources. All others can use the service for free by signing up as a partner or purchasing credits." You can also trace & store polygons and calculate shortest paths here.

A developing page where you can find tutorials for the basics of using GIS.

One of the many online programs where one can earn an undergraduate or graduate certificate in GIS.

You can download, for free, from NASA, the global ASTER DEM data here. You must register to do so!

FIRMS was developed by the University of Maryland, with funds from NASA’s Applied Sciences Program and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to provide near real-time active fire locations to natural resource managers that faced challenges obtaining timely satellite-derived fire information.

Earthdata from NASA holds more than 35,000 Earth science data set and service descriptions, which cover subject areas within the Earth and environmental sciences. NASA's former Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) was rolled up into this. You can switch between various Distributed Active Archive Center (DAACs). Data and information are filtered by nine key topics: Atmosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, Human Dimensions, Land Surface, Ocean, Solid Earth, Sun-Earth Interactions, and Terrestrial Hydrosphere. Explore the datasets within your topic of interest.

Here you can browse and download imagery of satellite data from NASA's constellation of Earth Observing System satellites. Over 50 different global datasets are represented with daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and images are available in a variety of formats including JPEG, PNG, Google Earth, and GeoTIFF.

This is a great listing of projects and available products from those projects by CCMA. There is much free and high quality GIS data available here, as well as satellite/aerial imagery, digital maps, habitat data and more.

A portal into coastal GIS data, tools and information about NOAA's work in this discipline.

The International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) provides location and intensity for global tropical cyclones. The data span from the 1840s to present, generally providing data at 3-hour intervals. While the best track data is focused on position and intensity (maximum sustained wind speed or minimum central pressure), other parameters are provided by some agencies (e.g., radius of maximum winds, environmental pressure, radius of hurricane force winds, etc.) and are likewise provided in IBTrACS. Files are available subset by Basin or time period, where basins include: East Pacific, North Atlantic, North Indian, South Atlantic, South Indian, South Pacific, and the West Pacific. Time periods include: All data, since 1980, and the last 3 years. IBTrACS was developed collaboratively with all the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Regional Specialized Meteorological Centres, as well as other organizations and individuals from around the world.

From the United States' National Geophysical Data Center (part of NOAA), you can download bathymetric and topographic data here.

This is the top level of the links into space weather, solar events, bathymetry, global relief, marine geology, natural hazards and geomagnetic data and models. This site is not the easiest to use, but it does have good information!

From this online mapping site you an extract data from over 85 of NOAA's observing systems.

The NWS GIS data page links to KML and shapefile data for watch/warning advisories, grid and operational forecasts, flashflood and precipitation data and more.

This NOAA site contains links to climate and weather data, much of which can be downloaded as PDFs or shapefiles. Take your time to choose which product will work best for your needs. Also check http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/Portal/ as a way to access GIS data from NCDC.

You can download KML or KMZ files of coral bleaching from satellite data here - free and easy.

According to NOAA, "this site highlights the uses of GIS in the fisheries service and...the agency's publicly available spatial data is listed on the site, as are useful GIS tools and links to interactive mapping sites and external fisheries data.

The purpose of this site is to eliminate confusion about vector shoreline data by providing information about and access to shorelines that are generated by federal agencies. The site was developed and designed by the NOAA Office for Coastal Management.

This site is part of NOAA and allows you " to search NOS data holdings, view metadata, and link to and/or download specific data sets." Key data sets in the Data Explorer include nowCOAST, Electronic Navigation Charts direct to GIS, Aerial Photography/Emergency Response Imagery, National Geodetic Survey Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) and the Harmful Algal Bloom Mapping System.

Open source, free to you! Self-described as "particularly useful for mapping and analyzing biodiversity data, such as the distribution of species, or other 'point-distributions'".

Downloadable OpenStreetmMp data for world regions, updated almost daily (select Region, then country).

This free ebook by Tomislav Hengl provides a great guide to geostatics and mapping using open source tools.

Free and open access to global development data

This site contains cropland data layers from 1997 to 2010. Data is downloadable and the interface is user-friendly. Enjoy it and thanks to the USDA folks for providing it.

U.S. Forest Service Ecoregions Center portal to the description, evaluation and mapping of large areas where similar ecosystems recur in predictable patterns. Links to other resources, maps and GIS data downloads are available here.

This data set site covers subjects such as animal product, all matter of agriculture, food, policies, research, rural economy and trade and international markets.

A product of the USDA, this food atlas also has a downloadable Excel document so you can create your own foodshed maps and documents.

Easy to use website with downloadable GIS data pertaining to forestry, recreation and environmental topics.

Here you can choose to download natural resource data for the United States from the USDA. Data is free for the most part if downloaded.

This geographic data site for Africa is made possible by the UN FAO and contains data on Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Please read the site carefully to see what you can download and the restrictions of use for the data.

Supply of data sets used by UNEP- has 450+ variables with national, subregional, regional and global statistics and geospatial data sets. Themes include Freshwater, Population, Forests, Emissions, Climate, Disasters, Health and GDP. Dynamic searches for many different nations, regions, cities, etc.

A product of the UN FAO, this site is a great place to look for data on political boundaries, agriculture, climate, fisheries, forestry, water, land cover/use, population data, soil info and topo info.

A Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations website focused on aquaculture and inland fisheries. Contains a listing of links to GIS data.

This is a high level site from a part of UNESCO that contains links to portals for ocean related data on a global scale. GIS data is on some of the sites, but this site is much better used to determine if there is an entity doing marine work in your area.

An excellent list of global products from the UNEP spatial data clearinghouse. There is Africa, Asia, Latin American, Caribbean, global, Brazilian and US specific population datasets on this page. Use the Related Links, Clearinghouse to find more GIS data.

This database allows you to download "all the GIS and attribute data for nationally designated marine and terrestrial protected areas with and without IUCN Protected Area Management Categories assigned, non-designated national protected areas and areas defined under international conventions and agreements."

U.S. Forest Service Ecoregions Center portal to the description, evaluation and mapping of large areas where similar ecosystems recur in predictable patterns. Links to other resources, maps and GIS data downloads are available here.

Easy to use website with downloadable GIS data pertaining to forestry, recreation and environmental topics.

This is a good place to look for imagery from the USGS including Landsat, AVHRR and aerial photography from now and the past.

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).

A good starting point for GIS data on land cover, particularly in North America.

Downloadable GIS data from the National Atlas. This is an official US government site and covers a wide range of data topics.

This USGS site offers downloads in geodatabases or shapefiles of the USGS National GAP data on species and landcover by region, state or land cover class.

From the Western Coastal and Marine Geology site of the USGS, this is where you can download GIS data layers for shoreline change in California.

From the Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies site of the USGS, this is where you can download GIS data layers for shoreline change in the Gulf of Mexico.

From the Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies site of the USGS, this is where you can download GIS data layers for shoreline change in the Southeast Atlantic coast.

Online mapping and GIS data download for United States raster and vector data layers or subsets thereof. A good resource for basic US data and global imagery.

US Department of Interior website which has links to GIS data and data sources pertaining to border issues and environment health initiatives. If you do not end up on the correct page, go to http://borderhealth.cr.usgs.gov/datalayers.html.

Downloadable GIS data for the United States, with some datasets also for the entire world. Includes DEMs, DLGs, the National Elevation Dataset (NED), GTOPO30 and the HYDRO1KM datasets.

A USGS site specifically devoted to providing easy access to orthoimagery of the United States.

The top site for planetary GIS data for Mars, the Moon, Venus, and other celestial bodies.

This site, by the University of California Santa Barbara, has links to the indexes and scans of California topographic maps.

An easy way to find out what topo map covers the area of the United States that you are interested in.