Contact

Finding geospatial data for international countries is not easy, unlike the data for U.S. Starting with general GIS datasets such as ESRI Data & Maps is probably a good idea.. = a good place to start.

General

ESRI Data & Maps (2001-2007)
The leading GIS company, ESRI, publishes comprehensive & global geospatial datasets, called ESRI Data & Maps (later, called Media Kit). The series consists of CDs and DVDs.
Access Constraints: Licensed data - NU Member Only. Ask the Map Librarian (email: c-maene) for more information about data access.

Global GIS Database CDs
ftp://ftpflag.wr.usgs.gov/dist/pigpen/globalgis (downloads)
http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/globalgis/index.html (descriptions)
The USGS Global Geographic Information System (GIS) database readily available to educators and the general public in the form of a DVD based world atlas. The USGS Global GIS database contains a wealth of USGS and other public domain data at a nominal scale of 1:1 million.

ITSCGM: International Steering Committee for Global Mapping
http://www.iscgm.org/
The ISCGM Global Mapping Project supports development of global scale geographic information through international cooperation. Registration is required before data downloading. This map shows the progress & participants of the project.

USGS HYDRO 1k Elevation Derivative Database
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/
HYDRO1k is a geographic database developed to provide comprehensive and consistent global coverage of topographically derived data sets, including streams, drainage basins and ancillary layers derived from the USGS' 30 arc-second digital elevation model of the world (GTOPO30).

GEO Data Portal - The Environmental Database
http://geodata.grid.unep.ch/
The GEO Data Portal is the authoritative source for data sets used by UNEP and its partners in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) report and other integrated environment assessments. Its online database holds more than 450 different variables. Display them on-the-fly as maps, graphs, data tables or download the data in different formats.

UNGIWG: United Nations Geographic Information Working Group, Data Portals & Links
http://www.ungiwg.org/data.htm
A collection of links to global data portals and similar services maintained by United Nations GI Working Group.

FAO GeoNetwork: Find and analyze geo-spatial data
http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/
GeoNetwork allows to easily share geographically referenced thematic information between different FAO units, other UN Agencies, NGO's and other institutions. Be patient - some do have links to downloads, but not all..

CIESIN: The Center for International Earth Science Information Network
http://www.ciesin.org/
The Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) is a center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Here is a list of downloadable data from CIESIN-sponsored FTP servers.

Atlas of the Biosphere
http://www.sage.wisc.edu/atlas/index.php
Hosted by the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The objective of this site is to gather and deliver as much information about the environment as possible. Data are broken down into four categories: humans, landuse, ecosystems and water resources. See also this data links.

WHO: Second Administrative Level Boundaries
http://www.who.int/whosis/database/gis/salb/
salb_home.htm
The Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) dataset is a dataset aiming at improving the availability of information about administrative boundaries down to the second subnational level.

Global Change Master Directory
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/index.html
The GCMD is an online directory to Earth science data and services. This site includes searchable datasets including agriculture, atmospheric, biosphere, cryosphere, human dimensions, paleoclimate, spectral/engineering, sun-Earth interactions, oceans, land surface, etc.

Biology, Conservations & Ecoregions ^ back to top

GBIF: Global Biodiversity Information Facility Data Portal
http://data.gbif.org/welcome.htm
GBIF Data Portal provides free and open access to millinons of global biodiversity/species records. Data typically contains place names and/or geographic coordinates (lat/long.) Visit also this GBIF home page.

NatureServe: Get Data
http://www.natureserve.org/getData/index.jsp
NatureServe and its network of member programs are a leading source for reliable scientific information about species and ecosystems of the Western Hemisphere. This site serves as a portal for accessing several types of publicly available biodiversity data.

CIESIN/SEDAC: Species Distribution Grids
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/species/spTextFilter.jsf
This Web site provides a search facility for downloading 1-kilometer (30 arc-second) resolution grids of the distribution of species. Data are available for global amphibian distributions, and for birds and mammals in the Americas.

WWF: World Wild Life Fund Data Download
http://www.worldwildlife.org/science/data/item1872.html
The data that WWF have created and/or improved, such as global ecoregions, lakes and wetlands datases, are available from this site.

World Database on Protected Areas
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/wdpa/
The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is compiled from multiple sources and is the most comprehensive global dataset on marine and terrestrial protected areas available. The 'WDPA 2007 web-download', contains the December 2007 version of WDPA in the GIS shapefile format.

WCS/CIESIN: The Last of the Wild
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/wildareas/
Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the CIESIN at Columbia University have joined together to systematically map and measure the human influence on the Earth’s land surface today.

Climate ^ back to top

NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
NCDC made some data available for free downloading - check under "Free Data". Free items are indicated by FREE in the item descriptions. Click on titles that you want to download. Typically, you will get climate data and a corresponding stations table with latitude and longitude. Try Global Summary of Day, or Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN-Monthly) for basic data.

CGIAR - CRU Global Climate Dataset
http://cru.csi.cgiar.org/
This ArcGIS Grid forma climate dataset is comprised of 1224 monthly time-series of climate variables, for the period 1901-2002, covering the global land surface, excluding Antarctica, at 0.5 degrees resolution.

Climatic Research Unit
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/
Datasets available from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UK).

IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://www.ipcc-data.org/obs/cru_ts2_1.html
High resolution gridded data based on CRU (above)'s climate data, version 2.1. (Appears to be the same as the CGIAR CRU 2.1 data.)

WorldClim
http://www.worldclim.org/
WorldClim is a set of global climate layers (climate grids) with a spatial resolution of a square kilometer. They can be used for mapping and spatial modeling in a GIS or other computer program.

Elevation ^ back to top

NASA: Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/
SRTM data is a near-global scale and the most complete high-resolution (generally 90-m) digital topographic database of Earth. Check its "Public Data Distribution" site for more data downloading options, such as the Global Land Cover Facility (http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/srtm/) and the CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/) for SRTM data.

Global 30 Arc-second Elevation Data: GTOPO30
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/
gtopo30.html
GTOPO30 is a gloabal raster Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approx. 1-km.) Probably the most popular, publicly available and complete global DEM dataset.

Geology & Soil ^ back to top

Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.0
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/
The Harmonized World Soil Database is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 15000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide with the information contained within the 1:5 000 000 scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World.

FAO/UNESCO: Soil Map of the World 1:5,000,000
http://lib.berkeley.edu/EART/fao.html
The Digital Soil Map of the World is available in the vector format (ARC/INFO Export).

Geological Survey of Canada: Geoscience Data Repository
http://gdr.nrcan.gc.ca/minres/index_e.php
The world geology and mineral deposit databases by Geological Survey of Canada are now accessable online from this page.

Global Soil Moisture Data Bank
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/soil_moisture/
Collaborative effort to locate, collect and share soil moisture data of the world - visit the site for data availability.

USGS: World Petroleum Assessment 2000 - Description and Results
http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-060/
The assessment is the result of a five year effort to estimate the quantities of conventional oil, gas, and natural gas liquids outside the United States that have the potential to be added to reserves in the 30 years from 1995 to 2025.

USGS: GEO-DATA Explorer
http://geode.usgs.gov/
Use GEO-DATA Explorer (GEODE) to access, view and download information from geo-spatial databases containing broad spectrum f data produced by USGS and other governmental agencies.

USGS: Mineral Resources On-Line Spatial Data
http://mrdata.usgs.gov/
A source for regional and global Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Mineral Resource maps and data

Centre for the Study of Civil War, PRIO
http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Geographical-and-Resource/
Unique world resources data, such as diamond resources & petroleum datasets, etc.

Hydrography ^ back to top

HydroSHEDS Elevation Derivative Database
http://hydrosheds.cr.usgs.gov/index.php
Hydrosheds - international river and watersheds data, derived from SRTM digital terrain data.

HYDRO1k Elevation Derivative Database
http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/
HYDRO1k is a geographic database developed to provide comprehensive and consistent global coverage of topographically derived data sets, including streams, drainage basins and ancillary layers derived from the USGS' 30 arc-second digital elevation model of the world (GTOPO30).

UNH-GRDC Global Composite Runoff Fields v1.0
http://www.grdc.sr.unh.edu/
Gridded runoff field data, combining observed river discharge information with a climate-driven water balance model.

GRDC: Global Runoff Dta Centre
http://grdc.bafg.de/servlet/is/987/?lang=en
GRDC is the digital worldwide repository of discharge data and associated metadata. Access to most data is restricted - read the data request procedural documents carefully. Here is their data products site.

Landcover ^ back to top

USGS Land Cover Institute: Global Land Cover
http://landcover.usgs.gov/globallandcover.php
Information and links to land cover data sources maintained by USGS. Data includes International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Global 1km land cover dataset. Make sure to explore this site if you look for land cover data of any regions.

JRC: Global Land Cover 2000
http://www-tem.jrc.it/glc2000/
JRC (Joint Research Center)'s Global Vegetation Monitoring (GVM) Unit produced a new global landcover classification for the year 2000 (GLC2000), in collaboration with over 30 research teams from around the world.

Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF)
http://esip.umiacs.umd.edu/
The GLCF is a center for land cover science with a focus on research using remotely sensed satellite data and products to assess land cover change for local to global systems.

Navigational Charts & Shorelines ^ back to top

NOAA Raster Navigational Charts
http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/index.htm
NOAA RNCs™ distributed here are geo-referenced, full-color images of NOAA’s paper nautical charts, published by NOAA in the .BSB format. NOAA updates the RNCs for Notices to Mariners on a weekly basis. They are an official product of NOAA, and meet the S-61 Standard, “Raster Navigational Charts”, of the International Hydrographic Organization.

Prototype Global Shoreline Data (Satellite Derived High Water Line Data)
http://www.nga.mil/
The NGA Office of Global Navigation, Maritime Division is in the process of developing a new version of World Vector Shoreline (WVS�) and in support of this effort has acquired a prototype Global Shoreline Data set.

World Vector Shoreline
http://rimmer.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/coast/getcoast.html
(Note: This file is being replaced by the NGA's Prototype Global Shoreline data.) The World Vector Shoreline (WVS) is a digital data file at a nominal scale of 1:250000, containing the shorelines, international boundaries and country names of the world.

Population ^ back to top

Gridded Population of the World (GPW v3)
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/
GPW v3 is the third edition of a large-scale data product that demonstrates the spatial distribution of human population across the globe.

LandScan: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/landscan/
The LandScan dataset, developed as part of ORNL Global Population Project, comprises a worldwide population database compiled on a 30" x 30" latitude/longitude grid.

Public Health ^ back to top

WHO: Pulbic Health Mapping and GIS Resource
http://www.who.int/gisresource/
This site is designed to strengthen communication among the Public Health Mapping and GIS network members and to facilitate data and information exchange. See also WHO's Global Health Atlas site and SALB (Second Administrative Level Boundaries).

HIV Spatial Data Repository
http://www.hivspatialdata.net/
The HIV Spatial Data Repository provides geographically-linked HIV-related data for mapping in GIS.

Satellite Imagery ^ back to top

Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF)
http://esip.umiacs.umd.edu/
The GLCF is a center for land cover science with a focus on research using remotely sensed satellite data and products to assess land cover change for local to global systems.

NASA GeoCover
https://zulu.ssc.nasa.gov/mrsid/
The GeoCover provides access to (circa) 1990 and 2000 Landsat Imagery in the MrSID format.

USGS: Data Pool at LP DAAC
http://lpdaac.usgs.gov/datapool/datapool.asp
The Data Pool is an online archive that provides, without a charge, FTP access to selected LP DAAC (Land Processes Distributed Active Archive) data products (ASTER & MODIS).

USGS: EarthExplorer
http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/
EarthExplorer is USGS tool for querying and ordering satellite images, aerial photographs, and cartographic products (DLG, DRG, National Atlas products). Registered users have access to more features than guests do. Not all, but some datasets are available for free download.

USGS: Global Visualization Viewer (GLOVIS)
http://glovis.usgs.gov/
Good to find and view various sypes of satellite imagery available - download imagery for a fee (not free).

Last updated: April 13, 2009

Maps and GIS