Geospatial Data

State Depots

Delaware	Maryland
New Jersey	New York
Ohio	Pennsylvania
Virginia	West Virginia

No link on this page represents an endorsement of any firm, product, or
service. All links worked on September 16, 2008. Caveat emptor.

National Datasets

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The National Atlas
This new National Atlas provides a comprehensive, maplike view into the enormous wealth of geospatial data collected for the United States.

The National Map Seamless Server
The National Map Seamless Server provides free downloads of national base layers, as well as other geospatial data layers.

National Weather Data in Shapefile format
The National Weather Service produces several data sets that are available in formats available to import into Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

National Transportation Atlas
The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides network data in ESRI shapefile format. Datasets that are larger than 20 mb are also available for download by region.

Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure
We call it GIS, they call it Geomatics. Regardless, you can start your search for Canadian geospatial data here.

the GIS Data Depot
Hosted by the geocommunity at www.geocomm.com.

Professional Certification

GISCI
the GIS Certification Institute.

ASPRS
American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing.

Google Earth

Google Earth
Searchable geographic information and earth viewer.

KML Reference
KML, or Keyhole Markup Language, is an XML grammar and file format for modeling and storing geographic features such as points, lines, polygons and images for display in Google Earth and Google Maps.

Cool stuff

ColorBrewer
A great web-based tool for selecting good color schemes for thematic maps.

ColorBlender
A useful tool for choosing colors that work well together.

VBScript Functions
From www.w3schools.com: this resource describes all of the VB functions that are available for manipulating attribute tables in ArcGIS.

Estimated value of Magnetic Declination
NOAA National Geophysical Data Center

Complete Sun and Moon Data for One Day
The US Naval Observatory allows you to obtain the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, transits of the Sun and Moon, and the beginning and end of civil twilight, along with information on the Moon's phase by specifying the date and location.

Julian date converter
Julian dates (abbreviated JD) are simply a continuous count of days and fractions since noon Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BCE (on the Julian calendar). The US Naval Observatory allows you to convert between Julian and calendar dates.

The Map Room
A blog for people interested in mapping.

http://www.shadedrelief.com
Ideas and techniques about relief representation on maps.

CORPSCON 6.0
The USACE provides a free "MS-Windows-based program to convert coordinates between Geographic, State Plane, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) and US National Grid systems on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27), the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83) and High Accuracy Reference Networks (HARNs)." CORPSCON also calculates scale factors and geoid-ellipsoid separations with respect to several GeoidXX models (XX = 90, 93, 96, 99, and 03).

Bulk Rename Utility
From the website: Bulk Rename Utility is a software utility that allows you to easily rename files and directories. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, and process folders and subfolders.

IrfanView
FREEWARE: IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP.

Interactive maps

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2002 US Census of Agriculture
SVG - This interactive mapping application is generated through the emerging SVG format created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a standard for displaying graphics on the Internet.

Lake Rim GIS
Personnel of the Center for Geospatial Data Analysis at the Indiana Geological Survey (IGS) and Indiana University (IU) were contracted to (1) compile data pertaining to land-use and environmental conditions, (2) assemble graphical, statistical, and numeric information, as it becomes available, (3) construct a GIS to facilitate rapid retrieval and efficient analysis of this information, (4) make the GIS available in an accessible format to the widest possible audience, and (5) post the results of ongoing bacterial monitoring within the region.

Chiefs-of-Ontario.org
Chiefs of Ontario is a coordinating body for 134 First Nation communities located within the boundaries of the Province of Ontario. The purpose of the Chiefs of Ontario office is to enable the political leadership to discuss regional, provincial and national priorities affecting First Nation people in Ontario and to provide a unified voice on these issues.

the GPS

GPS Basics
The Federal Aviation Administration has posted a brief introduction to the US Global Positioning System. The site also contains information about the WAAS.

All about the GPS
The Trimble corporation, a maker of GPS receivers, software etc, has a well-regarded tutorial that explains GPS and how it works. The site requires the Macromedia Shockwave Player plug-in.

GeoCaching
The GPS has spawned a new form of recreation - GeoCaching. According to the werbsite, GeoCaching is basically an adventure game for GPS users. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a variety of rewards.

Tasmanian GeoCaching
Next time you need to layover in Tasmania, logon this website and join the international group of Tassie cachers.

Aerial photography & remote sensing

PGS Historical aerial photo library
The Pennsylvania Geological Survey has digitized 1930s-era aerial photography for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They are available via this website.

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission
2000 Space Shuttle Endeavor Mission to produce a near-global, high-resolution database of Earth's topography.

WA Shoreline Photos
The State of Washington, via its Department of Ecology, has published aerial photos of Washington's marine shorelines. Use the online map to query and view geographic data.

USGS booklets

Topographic map symbols
Describes and illustrates various symbols used on USGS topographic maps.

Topographic mapping
Introduces topographic mapping, including map scale, control surveys, national standards, symbols, revision, and information sources.

Map projections
Describes the key properties and characteristics of important map projections. Also provides graphics and a chart to help you select the appropriate projection for a given use and extent.

Open Source GIS

NASA World Wind
World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth.

Open Source GIS
An online index of Open Source / Free GIS related software projects.

Open GIS Consortium
The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is a member-driven, non-profit international trade association that is leading the development of geoprocessing interoperability computing standards. OGC works with government, private industry, and academia to create open and extensible software application programming interfaces for geographic information systems (GIS) and other mainstream technologies.

http://www.carto.net
Open source GIS on the web - on this page you will find papers and publications focusing on cartography, geography or techniques needed for these topics. Includes Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) demos and tutorials.