GEOSPATIAL DATA REPORT : Finding and Using GIS Data

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.

Boundary Files from : http://www.aeroterra.com/d-argentinagral.htm (AEROTERRA, a private GIS company in Argentina. The note says that these data were taken from the Soil Atlas of Argentina.) – Also the image left

2001 Census Data : http://www.indec.gov.ar/webcenso/

I was looking for an Argentina boundary file at a department level (nation – province – department, about the size of U.S. counties, so my student explained..) so that my student can visualize 2001 census data she obtained from Argentina governmental website, and then I came across this AEROTERRA site.  Great – now we know we can visualize Argentina 2001 census data at a department level.

My patron was also interested in the past census data, which we don’t think is available from the INDEC (Argentina official census site.) So, we tred https://international.ipums.org/international/ to see if we can generate department level data using 1970, 1980, 1990 micro sample data. First, we compared the 2001 official census summary data from INDEC and the IPUMS micro sample-aggregate data to see how close the aggregated sample IPUMS data would be to the official INDEC data. We thought the resulted IPUMS 2001 aggregated data was close enough to the INDEC summary file. It’s so great that we don’t need to type in all data from the Argentina census books.. We love IPUMS! (Note: your research data request must be approved by IPUMS people first!)

I will add a map of AEROTERRA boundary plus IPUMS data map later -

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://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