Important Sites to Download Freely Available GIS Datasets – In the USA

By / May 21, 2020 / 3 Comments

Forewords

As a researcher, it is always troublesome to find right datasets for right projects. It could be more infuriating when you lose the websites that you’ve been downloading the data from. The best idea is to bookmark the important websites so that you will never loose them.

Check these websites to “Download GIS Data by Country” or “Download GIS Data – Global”

The links are categorized as follows: (Click to jump)

General
Boundaries and Shoreline
Land Cover and Vegetation		Geology
Hydrology
Census		Elevation
Weather and Climate
Ecology		History
Crime and Justice
Power and Energy		Transportation
State-Specific
City or Region Specific

General

  • US National Atlas: All raw data contained in the National Altas is available for downloading including everything from agricultural census data, presidential election results, airports, railways, glaciers, arsenic content in groundwater, and much more.
  • USGS Historical Topographic Maps: Electronic copies of USGS Topographic Maps from the last 125 years. Provided in GeoPDF format, which isn’t great for importing into GIS software, but apparently can be converted to GeoTIFF in the latest version of GDAL
  • National Geophysical Data Center: List of all free data from the NGDC – sorted alphabetically not by category, but includes elevation models, land cover, seismology and more.
  • North American Environmental Atlas: Environmental data for the whole of the North American continent, including land cover, pollution, climate, ecosystems, human influence and protected species, in raster and vector formats.

Boundaries and Shorelines

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Land Cover and Vegetation

  • National Land Cover Database 2001 and 2006: NLCD data for download at 30m resolution. Data includes raw land cover information (in 16 classes) and data on changes between 2001 and 2006.
  • Phenology: Seasonal changes in vegetation across the US from remote sensing images. Various datasets including Start of Season Time, Time of Maximum, Amplitude and Time-Integrated NDVI.
  • MODIS Irrigated Agriculture dataset: Raster irrigated area maps for the US, derived from MODIS data and available at 250m and 1km resolutions.
  • USGS Land Cover Trends: Land Cover Trends from approximately 1970 until 2000 at approximately 30m resolution.
  • Pacific Coast Land Cover: Land Cover from 1996, 2001 and 2006 derived from Landsat images for the Pacific Coast of the USA (California, Oregon and Washington). 30m resolution.
  • Chesapeake Bay Land Cover: Land cover for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed for 1984, 1992, 2001 and 2006.
  • Coastal Change Analysis Program: Nationally standardised database of land cover and land cover change information for the coastal areas of the US. Available in various raster formats.
  • CropScape: Crop-specific land-cover data for the continental US. Includes historic data back to 1997.

Elevation

  • National Elevation Dataset: Regularly updated DEM for the whole of the US, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Varies from 10m-30m resolution, using best available data for each region.
  • Great Lakes Bathymetry: Detailed bathymetry data for the Great Lakes at 3 arc-second resolution. To download data click the Create Custom Grids and fill in the areas you want.
  • Coastal Relief: Various coastal DEMs of the USA at various resolutions. Whole US coastline combining bathymetry and land elevation out to the end of the continental slope is available at 3 arc-second resolution, and various areas available at higher resolution.
  • Pudget Sound Lidar Consortium: Public-domain high-resolution LiDAR dataset for the Pacific Northwest. Registration Required

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Weather and Climate

  • NREL Wind: Wind availablity data across the US from the perspective of wind turbine generation.
  • Snow Data Assimilation System: Gridded data at 30 arc-seconds, from September 2003 till present, including snow depth, snow water equivalent, solid precipitation, liquid precipitation and more. Contiguous US only.
  • National Solar Radiation Database: Over thirty years of solar radiation data from sites across the US, Guam and Puerto Rico, plus raster data at around 2km resolution.
  • Iowa Environmental Mesonet: A range of up-to-date and historic weather data including storm reports, NWS warnings, climate reports and more. Not just for Iowa!

Ecology

  • EPA Environmental Dataset Gateway: Catalog giving access to all environmental data from the Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Terrestrial Ecosystems of the United States: A mid-scale ecological classification consisting of over 800 ecosystem types found across North America.
  • Digital Species Distribution Maps: Data showing distribution of a range of types of species (pollinators, birds, mammals etc.) across the USA. Downloadable as one, or split into species.
  • Bird and Mammal Species Distribution Grids: Raster grids showing species distribution across the US of birds and mammals. One grid per species, approximately 1km resolution.
  • National Wetlands Inventory: Wetland extent and type across the US, including information on riparian vegetation.
  • Protected Areas Database of the US: Shapefile of all protected areas in the US including attribute data description uses, reasons for protection and legal status.
  • Ecological Land Cover Map: The most complete map ever produced of vegetative associations for the US. Land cover is classified in to 551 Ecological Systems and 32 Modified Ecological Systems (areas where human impacts have affected the ecology). Available for download as ARC GRID or ERDAS IMAGE
  • Web Soil Survey: Downloadable soil data for the US in both tabular (csv) and geospatial (shp) formats.
  • US Fish and Wildlife Service National GIS datasets: Information and boundaries for Coastal Barrier Resource Systems, Critical Habitats, Ecosystem Regions, National Wetlands, National Wildlife Refuge Systems etc.
  • Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks LCC: Range of datasets provided through the conservation planning atlas for this area. Includes boundaries, ecological information, marine resources and more.

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Geology

  • Geological maps of the US states: Detailed geological maps with extended attribute data for each of the US states. To download data select the state, then the area, then click the reference link at the bottom. Scroll down to the bottom and the files are available for download.
  • Geology of the conterminous US: Similar to the above but in one file for the coterminous US, not including Hawaii and Alaska. Far easier to download than the above.
  • Magnetic Anomalies: Airborne measurement of magnetic anomalies across the whole of North America, in raster format.
  • USGS EnergyVision: Maps of various factors relating to energy use in the USA, the most relevant of which is the USA and world-wide geological maps. To download, view the web map, then click on the dropdown box labelled MORE and scroll to the Download GIS data option
  • PRIO Resource Datasets: Petroleum and diamond resource maps, globally.

Hydrology

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Census

  • TIGER: US-wide census data.
  • TIGER/Line 2010: 2010 extracts from the census database. These files contain the boundaries of census areas, which can then be linked to census data tables.
  • US Census Grids: Raster griddded datasets for census variables across the US for data from 2000. Approximately 1km resolution.
  • Archive of Census-related Products: A range of census-related products produced by a research project at CIESIN including boundary, migration and microdata samples.
  • TOD Database: Economic and demographic information for areas around fixed transit station in the US. Available at three levels – 1/2 mile buffer around station, aggregated transit zones, transit regions. Registration required

History

Crime and Justice

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Power and Energy

  • US National Power Grid: Data from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) showing rough locations of transmission lines and their connectivities. Data from 1993 and has not been updated since.
  • Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database: A comprehensive data source on the environmental characteristics (air emissions, resource mix, net generation and more) of all electrical power sources in USA. Each record contains location information, allowing use in GIS.
  • US Energy Information Administration: Individual layers from their interactive mapping system, including coal mines, crude oil pipelines, petrochemical crackers, refineries and more.

Transportation

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State-specific

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City or Region specific

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This blog is greatly influenced by Robin Wilson‘s blog. Many thanks to him for collecting such a huge directory of websites.

I know I have missed many websites. Should you know more websites, please feel free to comment below. I will be happy to include them in this web-page.

3 thoughts on “Important Sites to Download Freely Available GIS Datasets – In the USA”

  1. Pingback: Important GIS Data Download Sites – DINESH SHRESTHA

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