FREE USGS Landsat imagery - Imagery for Everyone

From http://landsat.usgs.gov/ here is something that may be of interest: A reminder, this acme out of the USGS on April 21, 2008 - Imagery for Everyone By February 2009, any Landsat archive scene selected by a user will be processed, at no charge, automatically to a standard product recipe and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least three months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive. Details can be found in the USGS Technical Announcement - .pdf (66.8 KB). http://landsat.usgs.gov/images/squares/USGS_Landsat_Imagery_Release.pdf

Unosat Satellite Imagery

The latest imagery is that of the devastation in Myanmar (Burma) - These maps have been produced or facilitated by UNOSAT from public sources. See HERE for data

Grab the 2007 TIGER/Line Shapefiles from the Census Bureau

I see that some of the free "data flogging" websites are now flogging the free 2007 TIGER/Line files (SHP format) for $100+ bucks! OR.... you can always simply go to http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2007/tgrshp2007.html for your self and take a few minutes to download these data yourself - sounds like a no-brainer to me!

About the data... The 2007 TIGER/Line Shapefiles contain current geographic areas (boundaries of governmental units as of January 1, 2007) and Census 2000 vintage geography. The shapefiles also contain some additional post January 1, 2007 feature updates reported in the Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS).

Download the 2007 Tiger/Line SHP files HERE

EastView Cartographics - a source of International GIS data

This data store isn't offering up free data, however, it is a fine commercial stopping point for those in search of hard to find International data products (China, Syria, Phillipines, and more). See the following:
Syria Geological Maps 1:200,000
SYRIA 1:200K Geological Maps/Syrian Arab Republic, Ministry of Industry, Department of Geological and Mineral Research; 1963. 19 Total Sheets, Contours 20m

Syria Geological Maps 1:50,000
SYRIA 1:50K Geological Maps/Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Syrian Arab Republic, 1978-1996.

Topographic Maps of Madagascar (1:50,000)

Thematic Maps of Belarus

Albania 1:25,000 Scale Topographic Mapping
Albania 1:25,000 (Republika Popullore Socialiste e Shqiperise 1:25,000) / Institutin Topografik te Ushtrise. Tirane : ITU. Contour interval: 10m. 6 colors. 1959-1990, 45x47cm.

Hong Kong 1:20,000 Scale Topographic Mapping
Hong Kong 1:20,000 (HM20C Series). Hong Kong Land Development, 1992 -7. 16 total sheets, contours interval 20m, UTM projection, WGS84 Datum

Hong Kong 1:50,000 Scale Topographic Mapping

Philippines 1:250,000 Scale Topographic Mapping
P.C.G.S. 1:250,000 (S-2500) / National Mapping & Resource Information Authority; Manila, Philippines, 1972-1999. 55 total sheets, 5 col., contours 100m, Transverse Mercator Projection, Clarke Spheroid 1866 Luzon Datum, 73X57 cm

Philippines 1:5,000 Scale Topographic Mapping
Philippines 1:5,000 / National Mapping & Resource Information Authority.

French Polynesia Topographic Maps (Iles des Tuamotu)

Free Canadian Imagery from Geogratis

Heads up, here's a link to the ftp site from Geogratis where you can download a ton of data - Landsat 7, Rdarsat, Seasat, NOAA data and much more... enjoy http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/download/

A cool historical aerials site

A nice data tip comes our way from LizardTech a really cool historical aerials site hosted by NETR online (A Division of National Environmental Title Research, LLC). With the help of GeoExpress and Express Server NETR was able to publish aerials showing off different locations in the U.S. Some of the locations have data from several different years going back as far as the 1950s, so you can see the difference at any given location over time. See http://www.historicaerials.com

hold on before you buy that free data

A tip... if your considering buying free, public data from a commercial data whore like the datadepot or other... wait a minute! Do you really know what your getting? Also, before you buy, blast provide a comment or email me asking for a tip where you can get the same data for free... I'm glad to provide you with a tip

raster nautical charts overlaid on Google maps

This is cool from NOAA... view raster nautical charts overlaid on Google maps... nice! See http://demo.geogarage.com/noaa/

Strictly data?

Come on ESRI Canada webpage developer... you can do better than this!

New Census data - USA Counties data files

Downloadable data files have been created to accompany the web-based USA Counties. Now users can download directly more than 5,900 data items from the Web site for the United States, the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and all 3,141 counties and county equivalents. Information in USA Counties covers topics such as: age, agriculture, ancestry, banking, building permits, business patterns, crime, earnings, education, elections, employment, government, health, households, housing, income, labor force, manufactures, population, poverty, retail trade, social programs, veterans, vital statistics, water use, and wholesale trade. See http://www.census.gov/support/USACdata.html

Pennsylvania imagery and more

Need Pennsylvania imagery? See the PASDA website for loads of fine resources and data - See here for imagery download via FTP or web service access (Google earth, ArcIMS). NEed to locate a quad? No worries with this simple quad finder!

National Geographic DataDoors portal

Not exactly free, however, this is a fine resource for viewing data and imagery... National Geographic DataDoors portal (www.natgeodatadoors.com), customers can select the exact area of coverage they want and order National Geographic’s TOPO! maps and i-cubed’s USA Nationwide Prime Imagery on CD-ROM or removable hard drives, or as a download. National Geographic Maps has scanned over 58,000 United States Geological Survey (USGS) quadrangles, color corrected them to create a consistent look and created a seamless map that spans all 50 U.S. states. The TOPO! map data is available at 1:24,000 scale in the continental United States and Hawaii, 1:63,360 scale in Alaska, and 1:100,000 scale in the continental United States. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data is also available to help visualize vertical terrain and conduct spatial analysis and modeling. DataDoors delivers TOPO! maps and i-cubed imagery in many open formats, including TIF, JPEG, SID and ECW, and supports the selection of projection and data.

Reminder of Free NED Elevation data from USGS

Reminder about the NED elevation dataset... PS: don't waste your $$ and buy it from commercial data repositories... you never know what your getting!! The National Elevation Dataset (NED) is a new raster product assembled by the U.S. Geological Survey. NED is designed to provide National elevation data in a seamless form with a consistent datum, elevation unit, and projection. Data corrections were made in the NED assembly process to minimize artifacts, perform edge matching, and fill sliver areas of missing data. NED has a resolution of one arc-second (approximately 30 meters) for the conterminous United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the island territories and a resolution of two arc-seconds for Alaska. NED data sources have a variety of elevation units, horizontal datums, and map projections. Access NED data from: http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/ or http://seamless.usgs.gov/

For info on 10m data availability:

1. Go to the United States viewer on SDDS
2. At the map interface, on the lower right, under Layer, scroll to 1/3 NED Index
3. Click on the layer, then scroll to the bottom and click Refresh Map
4. This will display the areas where 1/3 arc second NED is available

For info on 3M data availability see here

Google Earth data layers from Nanaimo, BC, Canada

The city of Nanaimo BC, Canada has been very proactive in working with Google Earth and making their data holdings available to users of "Earth". See the following page for some of the data they have made available - see http://earth.nanaimo.ca/data.html

Satellite Imagery starting points

I often have requests from readers who need help locating starting points for data resources. Today one request needed to locate some satellite imagery providers. Indeed there are many of them, however, a few good starting points include:

TerraServer http://terraserver-usa.com/

NASA and NOAA have loads of imagery (see http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/)

as does Digitalglobe.com and http://www.globexplorer.com/

Globexplorer - http://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/ImageAtlas/view.do

This is also a great resource - http://earthnow.usgs.gov/

See also http://www.geobserver.com/worldview_eng.php

and UNOSAT http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/

We also have a decent directory of public and commercial resources at http://www.gisuser.com/content/category/10/168/41/

Convert from NAD27 to WGS84

This datum conversion is often a pain for people. The following are a couple of utilities that you might find useful:
You could try this routine at http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html

Or from the USDA - http://www.fs.fed.us/database/gps/datum/index.htm

See also coordtrans (with free trial) http://franson.com/coordtrans/

Free US Township and Range Data download

A little know secret is that Free Township Range data for each State can be had via the delorme Xmap site. Simply jump to http://www.delorme.com/xmap/ and scroll down to the supplementary data section. NGS Benchmarks are also available for purchase for a very small fee.

The PLSS layer includes the following attributes for each section polygon:

• TWP – Township number
• TWP_DIR – Township direction, usually N (north) or S (south) of the survey baseline
• RNG – Range number
• RNG_DIR – Range direction, usually E (east) or W (west) of the principal meridian
• SEC – Section number

2007 First Edition Public TIGER/Line Shapefiles January 14, 2008

This from the Census Bureau -- Starting in January 2008, the Census Bureau will begin releasing TIGER spatial data in shapefile format. A revised record layout for the shapefiles and associated relationship files is now available in [PDF] and [TEXT] formats. This document was most recently updated on January 14, 2008. See more

Zillow providing SHP file downloads

This just in from the Zillow blog regarding free, SHP files downloads now available... The boundary lines for over 7,000 neighborhoods around the United States covering roughly 150 cities. These neighborhood shapes are now available, zipped up in the Arc Shapefile format, for anyone to download.

DWF Maps - Texas GIS data

NCTCOG's GIS Data Clearinghouse contains high-quality digital geographic data for the North Central Texas region. Data are available free to the public for use with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or similar data management and analysis systems. See
http://www.dfwmaps.com/clearinghouse/