Geographic Information Systems

DIVA-GIS is a free computer program for mapping and geographic data analysis (a geographic information system (GIS)), particularly useful for mapping and analyzing biodiversity data; however, they also maintain a useful list of free spatial data covering the world.

EarthExplorer (EE) is a client/server interface that provides access to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center archive. The EROS archive is a comprehensive collection of land remote-sensing data that spans more than 70 years for national (US) coverage and more than 50 years for the world. Current EE data collections include aerial photography, satellite imagery, elevation data, land cover products, and digitized maps as well as remotely-sensed data for a variety of USGS projects and partners.

A categorized list of links to over 300 sites providing freely available geographic datasets from around the world, maintained by Robin Wilson, a researcher at the University of Southampton.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is built by a community of mappers that contribute and maintain data about roads, trails, cafés, railway stations, and much more, all over the world. Click on Export to see alternative ways to download OSM data, such as by country or city.

This registry exists to help people discover and share datasets that are available via AWS (Amazon Web Services) resources.

A number of GIS datasets on agricultural land use, including global cropland and pasture from 1700 to 2007, harvested areas and yields for 175 crops, and global fertilizer application rates.

Vector mapping of global irrigated cropland and rainfed cropland.

The HWSD is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 16,000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide (SOTER, ESD, Soil Map of China, WISE) with the information contained within the 1:5,000,000 scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (FAO, 19711981). Supplementary data includes Soil Quality, Land Cover and Terrain Data.

GADM is a spatial database of the location of the world's administrative areas (or adminstrative boundaries) for use in GIS and similar software. Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, bibhag, bundeslander, daerah istimewa, fivondronana, krong, landsvæðun, opština, sous-préfectures, counties, and thana. GADM describes where these administrative areas are (the "spatial features"), and for each area it provides some attributes, such as the name and variant names.

Marine Region shapefile downloads.

Free vector and raster base map data at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales

A map of timezone areas in the world as used in the Unix TZ database format, from which we get the naming Europe/London, America/New_York etc. in shapefile format.

The G-Econ research project is devoted to developing a geophysically based data set on economic activity for the world. The current data set (GEcon 4.0) is now publicly available and covers "gross cell product" for all regions for 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 and includes 27,500 terrestrial observations. The basic metric is the regional equivalent of gross domestic product. Gross cell product (GCP) is measured at a 1-degree longitude by 1-degree latitude resolution at a global scale.

A list of Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center Elevation Products and how to access them.

GEBCO’s gridded bathymetric data sets are global terrain models for ocean and land. They are maintained and distributed by British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) on behalf of GEBCO. The data sets include the GEBCO_2014 Grid (a global 30 arc-second interval grid) & GEBCO One Minute Grid (a one arc-minute interval grid. Last updated in 2008, please note that there are no plans for further development of this data set.)

A list of free DEM Sources for the US and the world from Yale University's Center for Earth Observation.

The Global Reservoir and Dam (GRanD) Database provides the location and main specifications of large global reservoirs and dams with a storage capacity of more than 0.1km³ both in point and polygon format. [Registration required]

MRDS is a collection of reports describing metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources throughout the world. Included are deposit name, location, commodity, deposit description, geologic characteristics, production, reserves, resources, and references.

This a project designed to monitor the world's glaciers primarily using data from optical satellite instruments.

Free and Open Access to Biodiversity Data.

GRUMPv1 consists of eight global data sets: population count grids, population density grids, urban settlement points, urban-extents grids, land/geographic unit area grids, national boundaries, national identifier grids, and coastlines. All grids are provided at a resolution of 30 arc-seconds (~1km), with population estimates normalized to the years 2000, 1995, and 1990. All eight data sets are available for download as global products, and the first five data sets are also available as continental, regional, and national subsets.

The IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library contains over 300 data sets from a variety of earth science disciplines and climate-related topics. It is a powerful tool that offers access to a number of data sets, including GIS-compatible formats.

Marine Region shapefile downloads.

Publicly available animal, ecology and plant data available for free download.

The information system PANGAEA is operated as an Open Access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research.

WorldClim is a set of global climate layers (gridded climate data) with a spatial resolution of about 1 km squared. These data can be used for mapping and spatial modeling.

A list of Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Land Cover Products and how to access them.

Gridded data at 0.5 degree resolution showing population density, potential natural vegetation, cropland extent, grazing land extent, built-up land extent, crop extent (for 18 major crops) and land suitability for cultivation.

Comprehensive set of links to almost all land cover datasets. Note: although the page starts with US data, it continues with data for other continents lower down the page.

EarthExplorer (EE) is a client/server interface that provides access to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center archive. The EROS archive is a comprehensive collection of land remote-sensing data that spans more than 70 years for national (US) coverage and more than 50 years for the world. Current EE data collections include aerial photography, satellite imagery, elevation data, land cover products, and digitized maps as well as remotely-sensed data for a variety of USGS projects and partners.

A list of Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center Satellite Imagery Products and how to access them.

The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), from NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems Program, provides end-to-end capabilities for managing NASA’s Earth science data from various sources—satellites, aircraft, field measurements, and various other programs. Reverb is EOSDIS's new metadata and service discovery tool you can use to find remote sensing and earth science data.

Information about the USGS Landsat data and how to access the data through various tools/portals.

View and download worldwide satellite imagery (requires free account registration).

Airport, airline and route data across the globe. Data is provided as .DAT files (similar to CSV) with lat/long info. Data includes all known airports, and a large number of routes between airports.

Open source undersea telecommunication cables map, updated frequently. Data can be visualized in the embedded viewer or shapefiles can be downloaded by clicking the Raw Data link on the top right.

Dataset from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency listing approximately 3700 ports across the world, with location and facilities offered.