The United States Geologic Survey USGS.
- Topographic Map Products
- Transportation
- Hydrography
- Land Cover
Tiger – the US Census Bureau GIS data. Covers the US only.
- Municipal and state boundaries
- Cartographic maps
- Street maps
The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides data, products and services relating to several disciplines of geophysical science:
- Bathymetry & Global Relief
- Earth Observations from Space
- Geomagnetic Data & Models
- Marine Geology & Geophysics
- Natural Hazards
- Space Weather & Solar Events
Products available for download include:
- Aerial Photography
- AVHRR
- Cal/Val Reference Sites
- Commercial
- Declassified Data
- Digital Elevation
- DLGs
- EO-1
- Forest Carbon Sites
- Global Fiducials
- Global Land Surveys
- HCMM
- JECAM Sites
- Land Cover
- Landsat Archive
- Landsat Legacy
- Landsat MRLC
- NASA LPDAAC Collections
- Orbview-3
- Radar
- Vegetation Monitoring
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency offers an impressive POI list called “Complete Files of Geographic Names for Geopolitical Areas”, which seems to comprehensively cover every spot of the world.
I had a brief, but good, experience with the POI list of Isreal.
A plug for my own agency! USFWS provides National datasets (including WMS in many cases) for the following:
- Critical Habitat (as mandated by the Endangered Species Act)
- National Wetlands Inventory
- Project locations and Focus areas for Partners for Fish and Wildlife & Coastal Programs (ECOS)
- Cadastral data (and refuge road system) for the National Wildlife Refuge System
- Coastal Barrier Resources Systems (determines Fed funding / flood insurance)
- Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (Large scale eco-units for conservation developed by FWS & USGS)
- Migratory Bird Conservation dataset
Data.gov, the US government’s open data warehouse, whose self-described purpose is to “increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government” is celebrating its 3rd year of service.
The main area of the website contains some spatially-enabled data as well as links to external datasets, some of which are shapefiles or links to other websites.
There is also a Geodata Catalog which houses spatial data exclusively.
Types of data available are various and range from records of visitors to the White House to realtime earthquake data, TIGER data, elevation data, and more (like, a LOT more, 440,000+ datasets).
National Weather Service
USDA National Resources Conservation Service Geospatial Data Gateway
USGS Long Term Archive Products
On this web site, managed by the United States Geological Survey’s Long Term Archive, you can view satellite images and data, aerial photography, elevation and land cover datasets, and digitized maps from a variety of sensors. The archive contains images from 1937 to present, which you can also order or download at no charge.National Flood Hazard Layer GIS Status
From this page you can access the National Flood Hazard Layer Inventory Table, which allows you to download the most recent GIS layers of Flood Insurance Rate Maps for the United States National Flood Insurance Program.Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
From this website you can download GIS, KMZ, or PDF file formats of historical county boundaries for individual states in the United States of America. You can also view and interact with animations of how county and territory boundaries have changed since the 1600’s AD.United States Census Bureau Geography Program
From the United States Census Bureau’s Geography Program page you can access geographic data and products such as the TIGER/Line Shapefiles, KMLs, TIGERweb, cartographic boundary files, geographic relationship files, and reference and thematic maps.National Historic Geographical Information System (NHGIS)
From this web site you can access aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for the United States between 1790 and 2010 for free. To download data, you will need to register.United States Fish and Wildlife Geospatial Services
Links to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Geospatial catalog. From this web site you can access geospatial data and maps related to the mission of the Fish and Wildlife service.The links below are to web sites containing GIS data of various spatial extents:
- Links to the OpenStreetMapData website, which has polygon and polyline files depicting land, water, and coastlines for the whole world, as well as generalized waterbody and coastline datasets. The data are updated at least monthly, if not more frequently. The polygons and polylines are available as shapefiles (.shp file format).
Geofabrik OpenStreetMap Downloads
Links to a server providing data extracts from the OpenStreetMap project. The data are available at continent, sub-continent, or regional scale. For example, clicking on the North American sub-continent provides all the sub-region data available. The data are updated approximately daily. The available data are provided in .pbf and zipped shapefile file formats.- This web site is a cycling route planner with the ability to extract OpenStreetMap data for over 200 chosen cities and regions worldwide. The files are available in shapefile format.
- The Data Basin web site provides free access to thousands of scientifically-grounded, biological, physical, and socio-economic GIS datasets, although you will need to create a free account to download data.
- The GeoCommons web site is a community contributed collection of open data from around the world. Uploaded by the public, data are often from public and open government website and sources. The searchable archive includes over 150,000 datasets.
- Links to the Natural Earth Data project, which provides public domain vector and raster data of many natural earth features at 1 to 10 million, 1 to 50 million, and 1 to 110 million scales.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Spatial Data
Links to a web page hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). From this page you can download GIS data related to many of the over 96,500 species on the IUCN list of threatened species for users who create a free account. The data are made freely available for non-commercial use, to help inform conservation planning and other non-commercial decision-making processes.- Links to the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) data portal. CARPE is a long-term initiative of the United States Government to promote sustainable forest management, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation in the Congo Basin in Africa. The CARPE Open Data Portal is a collection of spatial datasets relevant to conservation activities within the Congo Basin.
- Links to ESRI’s Open Data site on ArcGIS Hub. This web site is a repository for user-supplied data that can be used, re-used and distributed freely by anyone.
- Links to the Open Topography project, which provides high topography open access datasets (mostly Light Detection and Ranging derived data) that can be downloaded in GIS-compatible and other similar file formats.
- Links to a United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) site containing Earth scale downloadable raster datasets showing a variety of atmospheric, Earth-Sun energy relationships, land, ocean, and biology data.
Antarctic Digital Database Map Viewer
Links to the Antarctic Digital Database Map Viewer, hosted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. From this viewer you can view Antarctic base layers, topographic layers, and human activity, as well as download data from the repository in shapefile, KML, comma separated values, and GEO tiff file formats.- The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) GeoNetwork web site operated by the United Nations provides a portal to spatial data and information that is meant to support decision making and promote multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development.
NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center
Links to the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), a data center as part of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and hosted by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. From this site you can access and download Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data sets and digital maps, although to download these you will need to register a free account.- Links to the the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) site. NASA operates and collects ASTER data to create maps of land surface temperature, reflectance, and elevation, which are freely available for download from this site.
- Links to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Mapping, Remote Sensing, Cartography, Technology, and Research (MRCTR, pronounced Mercator) GIS Lab. The resources are aimed at the planetary research community, as the site by provides GIS data statistical, and spatial tools for
analyses of planetary data. Do-It-Yourself GIS: 20 Free Tools & Data Sources for Creating Data Maps
This article from the Open Education Database describes six different map tools you can either download to the desktop of your computer or operate on the world wide web, as well as several sources of open-source GIS data.
The Open Geoportal (OGP) is a collaboratively developed, open source, federated web application framework to rapidly discover, preview and retrieve geospatial data from multiple repositories. The OGP has over 70,000 items in its collection from partner institutions all across the US.
Earthworks is Stanford University Library’s portal for discovery and distribution of geospatial data. Earthworks provides federated search of more than a dozen other research collections and direct access to data for download. Earthworks currently contains records for over 72,000 spatial datasets and cartographic resources, with over 58,000 of those freely available under permissive licensing.
http://freegisdata.rtwilson.com/
This page is maintained and hosted by Dr. Robin Wilson. This list contains a categorized list of links to over 500 sites providing freely available geographic datasets – all ready for loading into a Geographic Information System.