List of GIS Data Sources
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Introduction
Here you will find a list of sources to get GIS data. The list categorizes the sources by location of interest.
Global
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Natural Earth | Public domain vector and raster dataset. Supported by the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) |
| Global Map | Provides consistent coverage of all the Earth's land cover area. Includes different thematic maps such as: Transportation, Elevation, Drainage, Vegetation, Administrative Boundaries, Land Cover, Population Centres, and Land Use. Registration Required |
| UNEP GEOdata | Provided by the United Nations Environment Programme. Includes: Global Forest Cover, Global Potential Evapotranspiration, Global Average Monthly Temperatures, Dams, Watershed Boundaries, and much more. Use the advanced search to select "Geospatial Data Sets" |
| GSHHS | "A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Databse" High quality, and consistent data. |
| ASTER GDEM | 30m resolution global elevation data derived from ASTER satellite images. |
| Open Topography | "High-resolution, Earth science-based, topography data, and related tools and resources" Available as dense point clouds, and DEMs. |
| NCAR GIS Climate Change Scenarios | Includes data used by the IPCC in their reports. Registration Required |
| IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library | Collection of more than 300 datasets from various climate models and datasets. |
| HydroSHEDS | Global hydrological based on the STRM elevation data. Includes river networks, watershed boundaries, drainage directions, and flow accumulations. |
| USGS Land Cover Institute | Set of links for numerous land cover datasets. Although primarily US data, further down the list there is data for other continents |
| Global Lakes and Wetlands Database | Vector data outlining global wetlands, swamps, bogs, reservoirs, etc. |
| Forest GIS | Data includes: percentage tree-cover, population density and tree cover, share of wood in fuel consumption, etc. |
| Harmonized World Soil Database | Combines regional and national soil databases and maps under the Land Use Change programme of the UN FAO. Includes pH, depth, and texture parameters. 30 arc-second resolution. |
| Datasets from the United Nations Environment Programme | Includes global wetlands, distribution of coral reefs, mangroves, and more. |
| Mineral Resource Data System | "A collection of reports describing metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources throughout the world." Includes names, location, commodity, description, geologic characteristics, production, reserves, and more. |
| World Bank Geodata | A wide range of World Bank datasets (schooling and financial data, etc.) |
| Global Administrative Areas | Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, bibhag, bundeslander, daerah istimewa, fivondronana, krong, landsvæðun, opština, sous-préfectures, counties, and thana. |
| Global Agriculture Lands | Dataset representing extent and intensity of use of agricultural lands in 2000. |
| Global Irrigated and Rainfed Crop Areas | Vector mapping of global irrigated and rainfed cropland. |
| Past and Present Agricultural Land Use | Multiple datasets showing agricultural land use dating from 1700 to 2007 for 175 crops. |
| Global Water Systems Project - Dams and Reservoirs | Vector data on all reservoirs with a storage capacity >0.1 cubic km. |
| Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset | Contains all reported conflict events in 50 countries in developing world, from 1997 to present. |
| Gridded Population of the World | Includes raw population, population density, historic, current and predicted. |
| Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project | Based on the above data, but includes information on rural and urban population balances. |
| GeoHive | Population and County Statistics. |
United States
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| US National Atlas | All raw data from the National Atlas. Everything from agricultural census data, election results, airports, railways, glaciers, arsenic content in groundwater, etc. |
| National Geophysical Data Center | All free data from the NGSC. Includes elevation models, land cover, seismology, etc. |
| Phenology | Seasonal changes in vegetation across the US. Includes start of season, time of maximum, ampliture, etc. |
| Terrestrial Ecosystems of the United States | A mid-scale ecological classification of over 800 ecosystems in North America. |
| Ecological Land Cover Map | The most complete map ever produced of vegetative associations for the US. Classified into 551 ecological systems, and 32 modified ecological systems (where human impacts have had an effect). |
| National Hydrology Dataset | Hydrological information for the US. Includes lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, dams, streamguages, and flow modelling. |
| National Water Quality Assessment Data Warehouse | Large amounts of georeferenced data about water quality. Includes ground and surfacewater sampling data, discharges and health information. |
| US National Power Grid | Data from the Federal Emergency management Agency showing locations of transmission lines and connectivities. Has not been updated since 1993. |
| NOAA Coastal Service Center | Coastal related datasets such as: Benthic cover, LIDAR, high resolution ortho, marine jurisdictions, coastal ifSAR, etc. |
| US Census Bureau US basemaps and US demographic data | U.S. Gazetteer, TIGER/Line Shapefiles, census data. |
| The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) | provides, free of charge, aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for the United States between 1790 and 2012. |
United States Regional
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Northwest Forest Plan GIS Data | DEM, DRG, land use, watersheds, old growth, habitat, bounderies, etc. |
| Pacific Coast Land Cover | Land cover from 1996, 2001, and 2006 derived from Landsat images for the US Pacific Coast. 30m resolution. |
Washington State
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Washington State Geospatial Clearinghouse | Metadata catalog portal |
| Office of Financial Managment | Census data; economy; county government finance; human services; etc. |
| Washington State GIS Data | University of Washington Libraries |
| Geomorphological Research Group | University of Washington |
| PRISM | Puget Sound (University of Washington) |
| WSDOT | Washington State Department of Transportation |
| Department of Ecology | Large repository of datasets for the State. |
| Washington State Department of Agriculture | Agricultural datasets; complete map of land use. |
| Puget Sound River History Project | Historical GIS data for Puget Sound. |
| Puget sound LIDAR Consortium | public-domain high-resolution topography for the Pacific Northwest. |
