Final Project: Example Data Sources
Source of Data
There are countless sources of data out there for us to download the use. The list below, is not comprehensive. It represents a suite of sources that can get your started in your final project.
Note that data can be acquired from many different types of sources. For example from international, national and even local groups.
Last Updated: 1 March 2017
| Site Name / URL | Description |
|---|---|
| Earth Explorer (USGS) | A site managed by the USGS. Here you can find many different raster datasets including satellite remote sensing (MODIS, Landsat, and more). It is best to register for an account as then you can search by geographic extent. |
| NASA Reverb | Lots of different NASA datasets; has some overlap with Earth Explorer. |
| OpenTopography | A great source for lidar remote sensing data (predominately) across the United states. |
| NADP (National Atmospheric Deposition Program) | The National Trends Network has weekly precipitation chemistry data, along with some basic meteorology (daily precip, phase, and perhaps temp) at a number of sites across the country. |
International Sources
| Site Name / URL | Description |
|---|---|
| Natural Earth Data | |
| Global Forest Watch | |
| SRTM – Shuttle Radar Topography Mission | |
| SRTM – Shuttle Radar Topography Mission | |
| GeoData converter | |
| Diva GIS | |
| ESRI | |
| Society for Conservation in GIS | National / International sources for data, metadata, documentation and standards protocols (which vary country to country) |
Viz Sources
| Site Name / URL | Description |
|---|---|
| NASA Worldwind | Various satellite data based covering the last 30 or so years - NASA World Wind imagery (zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution imagery and SRTM elevation data to experience Earth in visually rich 3D; links to several websites for data and imagery download) |
National Sources
| Site Name / URL | Description |
|---|---|
| USGS National Map (large scale data) | |
| US Census Bureau | |
| US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | Data for Air, Water, Land, Health (organized in disconnected fashion – search the site on “data download” to find various download pages) |
| US Fish and Wildlife Service | Most of the data are stored on data.gov |
| US Bureau of Land Management - note their website has changed so we are linking now to the landing page! | |
| Geospatial One Stop (federal portal) | |
| Geographic Placenames (also in National Map) | |
| USGS National Geologic Map | |
| USGS NHD – rivers and streams | |
| NASA | |
| NASA Weather Imagery | |
| National Park Service (NPS) | |
| NRCS Spatial Data Gateway (envir/demog data tiled by county/state) | |
| Jet Propulsion Lab - now served by Earth Data |
State Sources (examples)
Counties (examples)
Private Sector Data Sources (examples)
Not-for-Profit Data Sources (many are international data portals)
- UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training & Research)
- UNEP Grid (United Nations Envir Program)
- FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Org)
- TERRAIN Map (John Childs data portal)
- OSM (Open Street Map)
- Metadata and Federal Data Standards (Federal Geographic Data Committee, FGDC)
Snow & Ice
- Thaw depth table
- GINA Projects link (where different data products/projects are actually desribed)
- GINA MODIS NDVI derived data description (includes links to data) GINA MODIS NDVI data (underlying time series)
- GINA MODIS derived snow descriptors → metadata
- Borehole temperature data from Alaska (can be downloaded from NSIDC)
- Arctic Landscape Conservation Cooperative - Geospatial Data
- North slope Science Initiative
- Toolik lake permafrost data
Change Detection with Lidar Data - Open Topography
The data below were suggested by Chris Crosby of Open Topography as excellent time series data subsets available on Open Topography.
Time Series Comparisons
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