List of GIS Data Sources

Introduction

Here you will find a list of resources to get GIS data. The list categorizes the resources by location.

The list is a work-in-progress!

Global

• 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

United States Regional

Northwest Forest Plan GIS Data

Washington State

• 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
  
• Washington State Department of Agriculture
• Puget Sound River History Project
• Puget sound LIDAR Consortium
• US Census Bureau US basemaps and US demographic data