Federal Government Spatial Data Sources

Department of Agriculture

Farm Service Agency (FSA)

USDA Aerial Photography Field Office, Farm Service Agency: The Aerial Photography Field Office, Farm Service Agency is the primary source of aerial imagery for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over 10,000,000 images are libraried at the APFO, dating from 1955 through the present.

Aerial Photography Field Office imagery viewers

Forest Service (FS)

General Forest Service site: This site lists a number of links to the Forest Service. The major digital data locations are under databases and the Geometronics (services) locations. There is a note at the "services" site that a data clearinghouse is envisioned, possibly this year.

FSGeodata Clearinghouse: The FSGeodata Clearinghouse provides on-line access to selected geospatial information and metadata held by the Forest Service for National Forest System lands.

Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC): RSAC provides national assistance to agency field units in applying the most advanced geospatial technology toward improved monitoring and mapping of natural resources.

MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program

VegTools: Vegetation Management Tools is a grass-roots approach to sharing information and projects used in the field to restore and maintain forest health.

Veg tools Science, Data, and Monitoring

Southwest Region GIS links

Southeast Region GIS links

Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS)

Geospatial Data Gateway: One Stop Shopping for natural resources or environmental data.

Maps, Imagery, Data, & Analysis

Soils information FTP site: Soils data from the Statsgo system for every state except Alaska, in multiple formats. Contact information is given for Alaska data.

National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) Web Soil Survey: Nationwide partnership of federal, regional, state, and local agencies and institutions to cooperatively investigate, inventory, document, classify, and interpret soils.

NRCS Data Resources: Includes Natural Resources Inventory, Plants, Soils data.

NRCS National Cartography and Geospatial Center: Overview of NRCS GIS Resources.

Department of the Interior

Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

Geocommunicator: BLM's publication site for National Integrated Land System (NILS).

Geographic Coordinate DataBase (GCDB): The data at this location relate to the PLSS (Public Land Survey System) data found at the USGS sites. The site is maintained by the BLM.

Legacy Rehost 2000 Project: This system provides access to Case Recordation, Legal Land Description (LLD), and Mining Claim Recordation.

National Science and Technology Center (NSTC): A diversity of data, macros, and other GIS resources.

National Integrated Land System: Joint project between Bureau of Land Management and the USDA Forest Service.

Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)

DataWeb: An electronic presentation of the Bureau of Reclamation´s Project Data Book.

National Park Service (NPS)

National Park Service GIS Homepage: General overview of GIS in the Park Service; boundary information for most parks available.

The National Park Service Data Store application (NPS Data Store) manages and shares National Park Service metadata and data generated by the Natural Resource and Servicewide GIS Programs of the National Park Service.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

USGS General Digital Data Information: Points to all USGS Data

Publications and Other Products: Includes links to Aerial Photographs, Digital Maps and Data, maps, Satellite Imagery, Real-time Data, Scientific Publications, Fact Sheets & booklets, Software and New Products.

Products Available from EROS: Clickable table format of all products available over the Internet from EROS Data Center; this includes documentation as well as data.

Map Information: Learn about, locate, view, download, or order topographic, geologic, and other special purpose maps and charts in a variety of printed and digital formats.

Other data sources on USGS Computers; these appear to be files created for specific projects that staff members have put on the WWW to share; there is metadata; most are in Arc/Info export format as well as SDTS.

Water Resources NSDI Node:

NWISWeb Data for the Nation: Water-resources data collected at approximately 1.5 million sites in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

TerraServer-USA: is maintained and managed by the Microsoft MapPoint organization with MSN and USGS.

U.S. Board on Geographic Names

EROS home page: Earth Resources Observation Satellite Data Center - Sioux Falls (USGS )

LANDFIRE: Multi-partner wildland fire, ecosystem, and wildland fuel mapping project. This project will generate consistent, comprehensive maps and data describing vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics across the United States.

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC): FGDC home page - Information on national coordination of data sharing (clearinghouse), metadata information, National Spatial Data Infrastructure, data sources

SDTS Home Page: Discussion of the SDTS data standard as well as programming tools

Mid-Continent Mapping Center Products: Products available through the USGS Rolla Office, including DRG and DEM data.

Status Graphics: for a number of USGS digital map products.

Overview of the NBII: Leads to biological data sets -also to the GAP homepage.

Gap Analysis Home Page: Cooperative effort among regional, state, and federal agencies, and private groups as well as the BRD functions of inventory, monitoring, research, and information transfer.

Arizona NBII Data Services Web Site: Joint site with the University of Arizona, featuring Arizona data.

Other Federal Agencies

Department of Transportation

Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS): The geospatial data sets distributed by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) depict transportation facilities, networks, and services of national significance. Databases are designed to be used with Geographic Information System (GIS) software packages to locate transportation features and provide a framework for transportation network analysis.

Federal Highway Administration's GIS in Transportation website

North American Transportation Atlas Data (NORTAD): The data consist of transportation networks, transportation facilities, and other spatial data used as geographic reference.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

U.S. EPA Geospatial Data Download Service: Increasing amount of data on line, generally in Arc/Info format; FTP site will be coming up shortly too; good metadata.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Map Service Center (MSC): Official government source for flood hazard mapping information, products, and services.

Flood Hazard Mapping: Information with documentation available at inexpensive prices in a variety of formats.

National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)

Global Change Master Directory: Earth Science data directory.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

National Geophysical Data Center: On-line search engine and lists of available data. Much of the data does have an associated cost; it can be ordered on line.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS) Data Explorer: Data Explorer offers interactive mapping tools that allow users to locate NOS products in any area in the United States and its territories through a metadata catalog.

NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS): National Data Centers for Climate, Geophysics, Oceans, and Coasts.

NOAA Coastal Service GIS Information

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA): Geospatial Intelligence in support of national security. Data is under Products and Services.

Office of GEOINT Sciences: The new site for the Defense Mapping Agency, Geodetic, Geophysical, Geotechnical Analysis, and Geospatial Intelligence Information.

U.S. Census Bureau

Census TMS Home Page: On-line mapping demo, background documentation on Tiger data; pointers under the about Tiger data section to downloadable Tiger data.

TIGER Home Page: Information on how to order current Tiger data.

Cartographic Boundary Files: Selected generalized extracts from the Census Bureau's TIGER geographic database.