GEOSPATIAL DATA REPORT : Finding and Using GIS Data

http://www.americaview.org/

“AmericaView (AV) is a nationwide program that focuses on satellite remote sensing data and technologies in support of applied research, K-16 education, workforce development, and technology transfer.” Most state’s AmericaView program provides access to its satellite imagery and remotely sensed data collection. Visit the member state websites below to find more about the state programs.

Current full member states are : Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Current affiliated member states are : Colorado, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Washington

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.mrlc.gov/

The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium is specifically designed to meet the current needs of Federal agencies for nationally consistent satellite remote sensing and land-cover data and also provides imagery and land cover data as public domain information, all of which can be accessed through this website.

Currently available land cover datasets are

• 1992 National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD 1992) and
  
• 2001 National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2001)
• 1992/2001 Land Cover change Database – developed to offer users more accurate direct change analysis between the two products
• The next dataset would be 2006 NLCD….

http://water.usgs.gov/maps.html

USGS Water-Resources offices provide water information that benefits the Nation’s citizens: Publications, data, maps, and applications software. Lists of water GIS datasets are available from this site.

Included are:

• Water Data (Real-Time Data, Annual Water Data Reports, Streamflow Map of the United States)
• WaterWatch (Floods and High Flow, Drought,  Monthly Streamflow, Ground Water, Water Quality)
• Etc.

http://nhd.usgs.gov/

“The NHD is a comprehensive set of digital spatial data representing the surface water of the United States using common features such as lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, canals, and oceans. These data are designed to be used in general mapping and in the analysis of surface-water systems using geographic information systems (GIS).”

You can also download NHD data from USDA Geospatial Data Gateway (my preference for downloading NHD) Note: This is actually a quite complicated dataset – be aware! You may want to use other simplified hydrography data instead, such as US Census TIGER derived data or data from the National Atlas Raw Data download website.

http://mrdata.usgs.gov/ (or go directly to the Downloadable Data site, http://tin.er.usgs.gov/)

[Image left: retrieved from http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geology/kb.html on 3/24/09.)

A source for U.S. regional (some data files are region-specific data), U.S. national and global mineral resource maps and data. Major data categories are:

• Mineral resource data, such as mines and mineral plants
• Geological data, such as generalized geology data
• Geochemical data, such as national geochemical survey database
• Geophysical data, such as magnetic & gravity anomaly data & aeroradiometric data

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/prov/og/

The Energy Geochemistry Data Base (EGDB) contains worldwide “chemical analysis data for crude oil, natural gas, coal, water, and rock samples analyzed by the USGS Energy Resources.”

“The Data Base exists in a Microsoft Access (.mdb) format. The downloaded .mdb can be queried directly in any version of Microsoft Access 2000 or later.” The “SAMPLE” table should include latitude and longitude geographic coordinates of sample well locations – so, in theory, we can use this database in GIS. BUT, I haven’t mapped this data yet, so I am just guessing..

Commercial/proprietary version of this database exist, and is available from IHS Energy Group.

http://energy.er.usgs.gov/products/databases/CoalQual/index.htm

“Since the middle 1970’s, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has maintained a coal quality database of national scope.” “The CD contains the coal quality data in the COALQUAL database; Landview III TM (data management software) which is integrated with MARPLOT TM ( mapping software); documentation on the software and data”

Note: much simpler “coal fields” data is available from the National Atlas Raw Data download website.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/index.html

“The National Uranium Resource Evaluation (NURE) program was initiated by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1973 with a primary goal of identifying uranium resources in the United States.”

“Hydrogeochemical and Stream Sediment Reconnaissance (HSSR) program (initiated in 1975) was one of nine components of NURE. Planned systematic sampling of the entire United States

As far as I can see, this is an incomplete database, and now available in three parts: Geochemistry of sediments database (also includes data for soils and some rocks; geochemistry of water database; and plant sample data.

See also

• “Geochemistry of sediments in the US from the NURE-HSSR database”, http://tin.er.usgs.gov/nure/sediment/
• “Geochemistry of water samples in the US from the NURE-HSSR database” site, http://tin.er.usgs.gov/nure/water/
• “Plant data” for limited areas only, http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/ofr-97-0492/quad/plants_o.htm (”Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant occasionally collected samples of plants during orientation phases of the NURE HSSR program. These samples consisted of various species of deciduous trees, coniferous trees, bushes, mosses, and algae. Although these samples were often not discussed in the various reports of studies, the records containing site descriptions and analytical data were included in the accompanying digital data files.”)

http://energy.cr.usgs.gov/oilgas/noga/data.html

Downloadable spatial and tabular datasets are available for basins in the U.S. Including priority basin assessment as well as national assessment from 1995. Visit also Energy Program Publication and Data Search website for more information available from USGS ERP.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/2006/240/ (Description)

http://water.usgs.gov/GIS/dsdl/ds240/index.html (Downloads)

[Vector polygon landuse/landcover data!]

This data set depicts landuse and landcover (LULC) from the 1970s and 1980s which had been previously published by the U.S. Geological Survey in raster format.

Other than in vector polygon format, you will also get this publication data in different formats, including:

• LULC raster data
• LULC source index polygons
• LULC tile index polygons – representing the spatial extent of each of the land-use and land-cover shapefiles

http://seamless.usgs.gov/

The USGS Seamless Server, like the National Map Viewer, is a collaborative effort among the USGS and other Federal, State, and local partners to improve and deliver topographic information.  Seamless Server is the primary site for downloading USGS imagery, elevation and land cover data. Data downloading is limited up to 3 Gbytes of data in 250 MB files in one request.

Currently available datasets include:

• Orthoimagery (DOQ, NAIP, Urban High-resolution)
• Elevation (NED & SRTM)
• Land Cover (NLCD)
• Satellite Imagery (MODIS, Landsat Mosaic)
• Scanned topographic maps (DRG)
• Transportation (BTS)
• Various data map layers from National Atlas

http://glovis.usgs.gov/

[Note: The USGS now offers selected Landsat 1-5 and 7 archive data at no charge!]

GloVis is a quick and easy online search and order tool for selected NASA satellite data – order or download imagery for a fee (except for landsat imagery!)

Consult this tutorial. Though GloVis offers functionalities similar to USGS EarthExplorer, I prefer to use GloVis when searching satellite imagery, esp. landsat data. Perhaps it is because GloVis offers additional search features such as cloud cover limits and date limits… or just my personal preference.

Available imagery types from GloVis are followings:

• Landsat 7 ETM+
• Landsat 4/5 TM
• Landsat 1-5 MSS
• EO-1 ALI
• EO-1 Hyperion
• MRLC
• Tri-Decadal
• Aster TIR
• Aster VNIR
• MODIS

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov

[Note: The USGS now offers selected Landsat 1-5 and 7 archive data at no charge!]

EarthExplorer is a tool for querying and ordering global satellite images.  Registered users have access to more features than guests do. Though not all, many datasets are available free of charge.

Through EarthExplorer you can also search, download, and order U.S. Geological Survey and NASA products from the following datasets:

• Aerial Photographs (mostly of U.S.)
• Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)
• Digital Elevation
• Digital Line Graphs (U.S. only)
• Digital Maps (DRG, U.S. only)
• Earth Observing 1 (EO-1)
• Global Land Survey
• Landsat Archive

You can also search and review products from the Radar, SPOT, and USGS Commercial datasets.

Consult the tutorial to search for data. Check also another tool, GLOVIS (Global Visualization Viewer.)

http://landcover.usgs.gov/globallandcover.php

Information about land cover data sources maintained by USGS. Information includes International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP)’s  Global 1km land cover dataset, Global Land Cover Characterization Program, and links to various regional land cover datasets.

http://hydrosheds.cr.usgs.gov/index.php

HydroSHEDS (Hydrological data and maps based on SHuttle Elevation Derivatives at multiple Scales) are international river and watersheds data, derived from SRTM DEM. The datasest provides hydrographic information for regional and global-scale applications in a consistent format.

Click on “DATA DOWNLOAD” on the left to access the files.

Included in this geospatial dataset (vector and raster) are:

• River networks
• Watershed boundaries
• Drainage directions
• Flow accumulations.

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://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gtopo30.html

GTOPO30 is a gloabal raster Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (roughly 1 km.) Developed by USGS, this is probably the most popular & publicly available global DEM dataset. For people who need more detailed, large scale DEM, check out SRTM 90m DEM (3 arc-second DEM) instead.

See also GLOBE topography dataset developed by NOAA/NGDC (National Geophysical Data Center), which is also 30 arc-seconds (approx. 1km) DEM. GLOBE stands for “Global Land One-kilometer Base Elevation”.

http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/

HYDRO1k is a geographic database developed to provide comprehensive and consistent global coverage of topographically derived data sets, including streams, drainage basins and ancillary layers derived from the USGS’ 30 arc-second digital elevation model of the world (GTOPO30).

http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov/downloads.php

Download comprehensive geospatial datasets for Afghanistan from this site, organized and managed by USGS. The data files include: Landsat and ASTER imagery, airborne imagery, SRTM DEMs, Soviet topographic sheets, and geological and geophysical datasets.