Getting to Know ArcGIS Pro 3. 2.
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The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1
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The Esri Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 2
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The ArcGIS Book
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1. Climate & Weather
WorldClim: Provides a set of global climate variables for non-commercial use, often used in ecological modeling to understand species distributions.
NOAA NCEI: National Centers for Environmental Information has the world's largest archive of climate and environmental data, including weather, oceanographic, and geophysical information.
PRISM: A highly detailed, high-resolution dataset of climate information for the United States, modeling precipitation, temperature, and other variables.
Weather Underground: A commercial weather service that provides real-time and historical weather data for locations worldwide, often accessed via an API for applications.
2. Elevation
3DEP: The USGS 3D Elevation Program, providing high-resolution topographic data and digital elevation models (DEMs) covering the United States.
ASTER GDEM: A global digital elevation model covering most of the Earth, created from stereo-pair images captured by the ASTER instrument on the Terra satellite.
NED: The National Elevation Dataset was the primary elevation dataset for the U.S. before being incorporated into the newer 3DEP program.
OpenTopography: A web-based portal that provides access to high-resolution topography data, with a strong focus on LiDAR point clouds.
SRTM: The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission produced a near-global digital elevation model, which is one of the most widely used elevation datasets.
The Earth's Relief: Refers to global relief models like ETOPO1, which provide elevation and bathymetry (land and ocean floor topography) for the entire Earth.
3. Geology & Soil
USDA-NRCS Web Soil Survey: The official U.S. source for detailed soil data, providing maps and information on soil types and properties across most of the nation.
USGS Geology: The U.S. Geological Survey provides a wide range of geological map data, often distributed through state geospatial centers.
4. Hydrography
NHD: The National Hydrography Dataset is a comprehensive vector dataset of all surface water features in the United States.
NHDPlus: An enhanced version of the NHD that includes additional information like stream flow and watersheds.
WBD: The Watershed Boundary Dataset is a seamless, nationwide dataset of hydrologic unit boundaries.
5. Land Cover
National Gap Analysis Program (GAP): A program that maps land cover, conservation status, and species distribution to identify "gaps" in conservation networks.
NLCD: The National Land Cover Database provides a detailed, 30-meter resolution map of the land cover for the entire United States.
MRLC: The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) consortium is a group of federal agencies who coordinate and generate consistent and relevant land cover information at the national scale for a wide variety of land resource monitoring and modeling applications.
6. Volunteered & Ambient Geographic Information
eBird: A global online database where citizen scientists submit data on bird abundance and distribution.
iNaturalist: A citizen science project where users can record and share observations of organisms, contributing to a global biodiversity database.
1. People
American Community Survey (ACS): An ongoing annual survey by the U.S. Census Bureau that provides detailed demographic, social, and economic data.
Census: Census data is the official count of a country's population, providing a detailed demographic snapshot of who people are and where they live. Conducted every 10 years in the U.S., this foundational dataset is used to determine political representation and allocate billions of dollars in federal funding for community services.
Esri Tapestry Segmentation: A commercial marketing dataset that classifies U.S. neighborhoods into unique lifestyle segments.
LandScan: A global population distribution dataset that models population density at a high resolution.
Natural Earth: A public domain global dataset of cultural and physical data at various scales, perfect for general-purpose cartography.
NHGIS: The National Historical Geographic Information System provides free access to summary statistics and GIS boundary files for U.S. census data from 1790 to the present.
2. Buildings
Address Points: The dataset contains locations and attributes of address points. It contains the addresses in the District of Columbia, which are typically placed on the buildings.
Building Footprints: A polygon dataset showing the footprint of buildings, also typically maintained at the local government level.
3. Transportation Networks
Esri Premium Streets: A commercial, high-quality street dataset from Esri used for routing, geocoding, and detailed cartography.
OpenStreetMap (OSM): A collaborative, open-source, and free editable map of the world.
TIGER: The official street network and boundary dataset of the U.S. Census Bureau.
4. Commerce & Employment
Esri Business Analyst: A suite of tools and data that provides detailed demographic and business location data for market analysis.
5. Satellite Imagery
LANDSAT: The longest-running satellite imagery program, providing decades of continuous moderate-resolution imagery of the Earth's surface.
6. Noise & Nightlights
DMSP-OLS Nighttime Lights: A long-running dataset from military satellites that captured images of Earth at night, used to map human settlement.
National Park Service Sound Map: A dataset and model that represents existing and predicted sound levels across the United States.
Nightsat: An experimental satellite program aimed at improving the resolution and quality of nighttime light imagery.
VIIRS DNB (Day-Night Band): The modern successor to DMSP-OLS, providing much higher quality and more detailed global nighttime imagery.
7. Volunteered & Ambient Geographic Information
Wikimapia: An open-content, collaborative mapping project that aims to describe all geographical objects in the world.
1. Administrative Boundaries
GADM: The Database of Global Administrative Areas is a high-resolution dataset of administrative boundaries worldwide.
2. Atlases
Esri Living Atlas of the World: A vast, curated collection of global geographic information, including maps, apps, and data layers, accessible through ArcGIS.
3. Gazetteers
GeoNames: A massive, free geographical database containing over 11 million placenames and their geographic coordinates.
NGA GEOnet Names Server: A database of foreign geographic feature names and locations, maintained by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
USGS Geonames: The official U.S. repository of domestic geographic names.
4. Linked Data
DBpedia: A project that aims to extract structured content from Wikipedia and make it available on the web as a queryable linked dataset.
LinkedGeoData: A project that uses the data from OpenStreetMap and makes it available as a linked data source for the Semantic Web.
5. Maps
David Rumsey Map Collection: One of the world's largest private collections of historical maps, with over 150,000 maps available online.
National Library of Scotland: A major map library that provides online access to a vast collection of digitized historical maps.
Old Maps Online: A search engine that helps you find digital historical maps across numerous international collections.
USGS Historical Topographic Maps: Provides free, high-resolution digital copies of the entire collection of historical U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps.
These are the best places to get answers to specific technical questions.
GIS Stack Exchange: This is the largest and most active Q&A site for GIS professionals. It's a highly moderated, technical forum for cartographers, geographers, and anyone using GIS. If you have a specific software or programming problem, this is the place to go.
Reddit (/r/gis): The GIS subreddit is a large, active, and less formal community. It's a great place for everything from technical questions and career advice to sharing interesting maps and discussing industry news.
These are official or user-run forums dedicated to a particular GIS software.
Esri Community: This is the official community forum for all Esri products, including ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and developer tools. It's the primary place to get authoritative answers from Esri staff and expert users.
QGIS Community: The official QGIS site hosts forums, mailing lists, and user groups. This is the best place to get help specifically related to QGIS software, from basic questions to advanced plugin development.
These platforms are more focused on professional connections, career development, and industry news.
LinkedIn Groups: Several large GIS groups exist on LinkedIn. These are excellent for networking, finding job postings, and participating in professional discussions. Key groups to search for include "GIS," "Geospatial," and "GIS Professionals."
