GEOSPATIAL DATA REPORT : Finding and Using GIS Data

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2009/tgrshp2009.html
(or directly from http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/)

2009 version just came out on 10/1/09! Previous versions are also linked from this site.

The TIGER/Line Shapefiles are extracts containing selected geographic and cartographic information from the Census Bureau’s MAF/TIGER® database. Unlike the previous Cartographic Boundary Files site, this site includes block boundary files as well as hydrography, transportation/streets and landmark data files. Users can also download multiple TIGER/Line Shapefiles at a time via this FTP site.

Again, these files contain no demographic information but are designed to be used with decennial census population and housing data as well as other related federal datasets.

http://na.unep.net/datasets/datalist.php

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) / Global Resource Information Database (GRID) Spatial Data Clearinghouse offers a variety of global and international spatial datasets.

Datasets available are:

• Africa Population Distribution Database – years 1960, 70, 80, 90 & 2000
• Asia Population Distribution Database – year 1995
• Asia Administrative Boundaries – years vary
• Asia Towns/Cities point data with population – 1995 estimated & other pop years vary
• Latin America & Caribbean Population Distribution Database – years 1960, 70, 80, 90 & 2000
• Latin America & Caribbean Soil & Terrain Database
• Global Population Distribution Database – 1990
• Brazil Datasets – Soils & Vegetation

http://www.maplibrary.org/stacks/gadm/

“GADM is a database of the location of the world’s administrative areas. Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, districts etc. GADM has been developed as part of the BioGeoMancer project. It was partly funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore foundation. The work was done at the Univeristy of California, Berkeley, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and the International Rice Research Institute by Robert Hijmans, Nell Garcia, Julian Kapoor, Arnel Rala, Aileen Maunahan, and John Wieczorek.” – accessed on 5/27/09 – read more on the website above.

http://eusoils.jrc.it/esdb_archive/EuDASM/indexes/access.htm

Various sets of historical soil maps are available for downloading from the European Digital Archive of Soil Maps (EuDASM) hosted by the Institute of Environment and Sustainability (IES) in the European Commission. The map were scanned in high resolution but are not georeferenced.

Map images are grouped by region:

• Africa
• Asia
• Canada
• Caribbean Islands
• Europe
• Latin America
• United States

http://geode.usgs.gov/

Or, you may access files directly from this site : http://geode.usgs.gov/ftp/
(Files are sort of organized by country/region, but not always. The trick to find files for your study area is to read a page HTML file carefully – the source HTMLs can be found in: http://geode.usgs.gov/download/ or http://geode.usgs.gov/projects/)

Use GEO-DATA Explorer (GEODE) to access, view and download natural and energy resource data. Data have been collected from the USGS Energy Resources Program and other agencies and made available by the National Oil and Gas Assessment and the World Petroleum Assessment. Most base maps (boundaries, city points, hydrography, etc.) seem to be extracted from DCW (Digital Chart of the World) and thus not unique.

World resources dataset contains coal, petroleum, oil, gas and natural gas liquids information as well as geologic data.

Regional and national datasets for selected regions and countries are also available from this site.

Note: Data availabilities vary depending on regions and countries – good amount of data is available for South America, for example. It is kind of a messy dataset, though – their file organization is terrible. File names are inconsistent and some metadata files are available only from the FTP site mentioned above.

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/
Datasets are managed by a variety of people and projected within the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,  U.K.  The various datasets on the CRU website are provided for all to use, provided the sources are acknowledged.

Available datasets include:

• Temperature, precipitation, pressure and circulation indices
• Mediterranean climate
• Alpine climate
• High-resolution gridded data
• Paleoclimate
• Japan climate
• Greenland climate
• Drought indices, and more.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1150/

This site provides a high-quality spatial mostly geology/mineral data for Northeast Asia. The coverage includes: Eastern Siberia, Russian Far East, Mongolia, northern China, South Korea, and Japan.

Vector (shapefiles) and raster datasets included are:

• Geodynamics map at a scale of 1:5,000,000
• Mineral deposit location map
• Metallogenic belt maps
• Descriptions of geologic units, including tectonostratigraphic terranes, cratons, major melange zones, and overlap assemblages
• Descriptions of metallogenic belts
• Mineral deposit descriptions
• Page-size stratigraphic columns for major terranes.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/japan/

This site from Harvard provides historical GIS dataset for Japan including infrastructure and land and coastal boundaries as well as topographic images. Registration is require to obtain data from the site.

http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/toukeiChiri.do?method=init

Click on the second item, ダウンロード, to access downloadable files. Since the previous GISPlaza (統計GIS in Japanese) site isn’t accessible (http://gisplaza.stat.go.jp/GISPlaza) I am guessing this is the newer version of the GIS data and statistics website..

The GIS Plaza of Statistics provides small area statistics including censuses and industry/business surveys (down to either cities/places or wards if applicable)  and thematic maps showing the distribution of statistical indicators for small areas (i.e. subdivision of municipalities.) Here are step-by-step instructions on how to download boundary data & data tables, http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/NetHelp10/WordDocuments/_95.htm.  Here is another instructional document on how to use the interactive mapping website, http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/NetHelp10/WordDocuments/_16.htm. Note: text in Japanese only – use Google Translate or other language tools to get some ideas. .  Visit also http://www.stat.go.jp/english/ for other statistics on Japan in English.

http://www.iscgm.org/

My favorite “yet-complete-but-they-are-getting-there” global dataset (scale 1:1000K.) The ISCGM Global Mapping Project supports development of global scale geographic information through international cooperation. To access data files, click on “Download” on the left – Registration (free) is required to download data. This map shows the progress & participants of the project. (This blog’s countries listing is updated on 1/17/09.)

Eight major data categories are:

• Admin. Boundaries
• Drainages
• Elevation
• Land Cover
• Land Use
• Population Centers
• Transportation
• Vegetation