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 / URLDescription
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 ReverbLots of different NASA datasets; has some overlap with Earth Explorer.
OpenTopographyA 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 / URLDescription
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 GISNational / International sources for data, metadata, documentation and standards protocols (which vary country to country)

Viz Sources

Site Name / URLDescription
NASA WorldwindVarious 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 / URLDescription
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)

Snow & Ice


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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