Links

We hope you will find these links to GIS downloadable data, map resources, newsletters and blogs, and GIS tools helpful. If you have suggestions for other links that you would like to see listed here, or find broken links, please send comments to gis@sfsu.edu.

In-Page Links

• Data Sources
• Map Resources
• Newsletters and Blogs
• Tools

Data Sources

• Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) from the maps page you can download a large number of interactive infrastructure atlases that allow you to easily create your own customized infrastructure maps ready for use in documents and presentations. For the more technical user, the public domain GIS data underlying these atlases can also be downloaded in the form of shape files for further analysis.
• All The World's Primates illustrates the diversity of our taxonomic order. The foundation of the website is a relational database with contributions from more than 300 scientists, most of whom have done research on primates in their natural habitats.
• ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) is an imaging instrument flying on Terra, a satellite launched in December 1999 as part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) and is being used to obtain detailed maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation.
• Audubon Alaska is an office of the National Audubon Society, and the mission is to conserve the spectacular natural ecosystems of our state, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats, for the benefit and enjoyment of current and future generations.
• Avian Knowledge Alliance (AKA) is an international group of organizations dedicated to amassing, archiving, and communicating knowledge gained from the study of birds. The AKA brings together the unique capacities and roles of non‐government organizations (NGOs) with broad participation from government agencies, academic institutions and others.
• Bay Area Automated Mapping Association (BAAMA) is a non-profit, professional organization that organizes bi-monthly educational forums, the annual California GIS Conference, and periodic technical tours on a broad range of geographic information systems (GIS) and automated mapping topics.
• BayAreaLands.org recently completed a 9 county conservation plan for the San Francisco Bay Area, it includes an online tool (hit Explorer tab) to access key data sets and extract area-specific information, as well as an opportunity to download the (nearly) entire GIS database with a nicely done project file with organization and symbology.
• BirdLife Data Zone provides information, maps and reports on the status of all 10,000 of the world's bird species. To request a copy of the shapefiles of species range maps for threatened birds, please visit the BirdLife Data Zone here.
• Butterflies and Moths of North America is an ambitious effort to collect, store, and share species information and occurrence data.
• California GIS maps & Information Sites this page will provide you with links to county and city resources for online Geographic Information Systems ("GIS") mapping and information.
• Cal-Atlas Geospatial Clearinghouse This site facilitates the coordinated and sustainable development, maintenance, licensing and sharing of geospatial data and web map services by California government agencies, partners and stakeholders. California government agencies work with the California GIS Council, regional GIS collaboratives and the broader California GIS community to define the data architecture, systems, standards, agreements and processes for a fully integrated and effective California Spatial Data Infrastructure .
• Census TIGER Shapefiles 2010 extracts containing geographic and cartographic information from the Census Bureau's MAF/TIGER® (Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) database.
• City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C/CAG) deals with issues that affect the quality of life in general; transportation, air quality, stormwater runoff, hazardous waste, solid waste and recycling, land use near airports, and abandoned vehicle abatement.
• Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiative aimed at promoting sustainable natural resource management in the Congo Basin.
• Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO) is a world leader in the study, appreciation, and conservation of birds. Our hallmarks are scientific excellence and technological innovation to advance the understanding of nature and to engage people of all ages in learning about birds and protecting the planet..
• Cropland Data Layer contains crop specific digital data layers, suitable for use in geographic information systems (GIS) applications.
• Data.gov purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
• Data Basin is a free, online system that connects users with spatial datasets, tools, and expertise. Individuals and organization can explore and download a vast library of datasets, upload their own data, create and publish analysis, utilize working groups, and produce customized maps that can be easily shared.
• Digital elevation model (DEM) data are arrays of regularly spaced elevation values referenced horizontally either to a Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection or to a geographic coordinate system. The grid cells are spaced at regular intervals along south to north profiles that are ordered from west to east. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) produces five primary types of elevation data: 7.5-minute DEM, 30-minute DEM, 1-degree DEM, 7.5-minute Alaska DEM, and 15-minute Alaska DEM.
• Energy Data Exchange (EDX) is an online system providing access to information and data relevant to fossil and renewable energy systems. EDX coordinates historical and current data and information from a wide variety of sources to serve as a research and rapid response tool.
• Energy Data Resources for GIS NCSU Libraries' Data Services participated in the Year of Energy by compiling the a list of published and online Geospatial and Numeric data resources which pertain to the advancement of research and education about energy.
• Environmental Agency Abu Dhabi This portal offers access to environmental data such as geology, soils, flora, fauna, marine habitats, and protected zones within Abu Dhabi.
• Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) is a USAID-funded activity that collaborates with international, regional and national partners to provide timely and rigorous early warning and vulnerability information on emerging and evolving food security issues. FEWS NET professionals in the Africa, Central America, Haiti, Afghanistan and the United States monitor and analyze relevant data and information in terms of its impacts on livelihoods and markets to identify potential threats to food security.
• Freshwater Trust actively works to restore and protect entire freshwater ecosystems. Our goal is simple: return health to every river and stream in the state. The Environmental Protection Agency says that 30,000 miles of Oregon's rivers and streams fail to fully support aquatic life.
• GeoCommons GeoCommons is the public community of GeoIQ users who are building an open repository of data and maps for the world. The GeoIQ platform includes a large number of features that empower you to easily access, visualize and analyze your data.
• GISDataDepot Please note that data available from this site requires users to be proficient in GIS and may require access to GIS software.
• Global Action Atlas enables you to support efforts across the globe to reduce human suffering, protect natural landscapes, and more. By National Geographic Society.
• Global Administrative Areas (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.
• Global Elevation Datasets is Ben's Vterrain's page with a links to various elevation datasets with global or nearly global coverage, the most significant being SRTM.
• Global Forest Monitoring Project is examining trends in forest cover change at global scale by using remotely sensed data.
• Global Forest Watch Data Archives an initiative of the World Resources Institute, offers good data on forests worldwide, including several good interactive maps. The focus is on forests in Brazil, Canada, Chile, Central Africa, Indonesia, Russia, the United States and Venezuela.
• Global Runoff Data Center is an International data centre operating under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Established in 1988 to support the research on global and climate change and integrated water resources management, the GRDC has been serving for twenty years successfully as a facilitator between the producers of hydrologic data and the international research community. GRDC is a key partner in a number of data collection and data management projects on a global scale.
• Hike! By providing free tools for creating and fining hiking groups, and routes, we want to get more people outdoors, and to learn about just what it took to preserve the natural beauty that we still have left.
• Integrated Taxonomic Information System has authoritative taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of North America and the world.
• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is an international consortium of about 700 academic institutions and research organizations, and maintains a data archive of more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences. It hosts 16 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species contains assessments for almost 60,000 species, of which about 28,000 have spatial data. This spatial data collection provided below is for most of the comprehensivley assessed taxonomic groups such as amphibians, mammals, threatened birds, reef-building corals, groupers, wrasses, angelfish, butterflyfish, seasnakes, seagrasses and mangroves.
• Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is a component of NASAs Earth Observing System (EOS) Data and Information System (EOSDIS). LP DAAC processes, archives, and distributes land data and products derived from the EOS sensors.
• MapAction works in disaster zones providing frequently updated situation maps showing where relief help is most urgently needed.
• MapTogether is a project that provides free map-related training and tools for community and nonprofit groups around the world. Our resources include software, data sets, online mapping services, documentation, and training resources.
• MarineCadastre.gov is an integrated marine information system that provides ocean data, offshore planning tools, and technical support to the offshore renewable energy community. The project was designed specifically to support renewable energy siting on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf but is also being used for other ocean-related efforts.
• Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) directs the state to reevaluate and redesign California's system of marine protected areas (MPAs) to: increase coherence and effectiveness in protecting the state's marine life and habitats, marine ecosystems, and marine natural heritage, as well as to improve recreational, educational and study opportunities provided by marine ecosystems subject to minimal human disturbance.
• MODIS Data contains everything from ATBDs to Product Descriptions to tutorials on ordering MODIS data from the various DAACs.
• NASA Earth Observatory Explore the causes and effects of climatic and environmental change through the use of real satellite data.
• National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) acquires aerial imagery during the agricultural growing seasons in the continental U.S. A primary goal of the NAIP program is to make digital ortho photography available to governmental agencies and the public within a year of acquisition.
• National Atlas Nearly all data available in the National Atlas Map Maker can be downloaded at no cost. This raw data and its most up-to-date documentation is accessible from the index found on this page.
• National Cancer Institute is a web site supported by the NCI for use by the public, cancer researchers, and the GIS Special Interest Group.
• National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information, compiling records from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States. NCED is also downloadable as a layer from Defenders of Wildlife.
• National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF) hosted at WHOI, is a federally funded center that operates, maintains, and coordinates the use of three vital deep ocean vehicles.
• National Elevation Dataset (NED) is designed to provide national elevation data in a seamless form with a consistent datum, elevation unit, and projection. Data corrections were made in the NED assembly process to minimize artifacts, permit edge matching, and fill sliver areas of missing data.
• National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is an element of the U.S. Geological Survey. We help implement the Department of Interior’s goals of inventory, monitoring, research, and information transfer. One component, PAD-US, is a spatially explicit inventory that lets any user – from the general public to professional land managers – know exactly what lands are protected anywhere in the United States and allows them to easily use this inventory in conservation, land management, planning, recreation and other uses
• National Geodetic Survey (NGS) Part of NOAA's mission is to provide the public with survey control information, such as Latitude, Longitude, Height and Gravity Data.
• National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) is the surface water component of The National Map. The NHD is a digital vector dataset used by geographic information systems (GIS). It contains features such as lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, canals, dams and streamgages.
• NHDPlus is a geo-spatial, hydrologic framework dataset envisioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency. NHDPlus is an integrated suite of application-ready geospatial data sets that incorporate many of the best features of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), the National Elevation Dataset (NED), and the Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD).
• National Integrated Drought Information System has a lot of good stuff on this general topic.
• National Land Cover Dataset provides the Nation with nationally complete, current, consistent, and public domain information on the Nation's land cover. Land cover information is critical for local, state, and federal managers and officials to assist them with issues such as assessing ecosystem status and health, modeling nutrient and pesticide runoff, understanding spatial patterns of biodiversity, land use planning, deriving landscape pattern metrics, and developing land management policies.
• National Vegetation Classification Standard (NVCS) is an FGDC standard Classification System through the physiognomic (first 5 levels). Work continues through the USGS-NPS Vegetation Mapping Program, in association with USGS/CSS (CBI), USGS/CSS (GAP), EPA (EMAP), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, NatureServe, The Nature Conservancy, Ecological Society of America (Vegetation Section), and the FGDC Vegetation Subcommittee on the floristic levels (lower 2 levels) of the standard.
• National Vegetation-Related Links Is a set of links from California Native Plant Society (CNPS) to websites and pages for national vegetation standards and other useful plant data resources.
• Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
• Naval Research Laboratory Digital Bathymetry Data Base 2-minute resolution (NRL DBDB2) is a global topography data set on a 2-min by 2-min uniform grid developed for the ocean model.
• NOAA Comprehensive Large Array-Data Stewardship System (CLASS) is an electronic library of NOAA environmental data. CLASS is NOAA's premiere on-line facility for the distribution of NOAA and US Department of Defense (DoD) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) data, NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data, and derived data.
• NOAA Coastal Service Center is dedicated to working with state and local coastal programs to determine data needs and deliver not only the data, but also the tools and training needed to turn these data into useful information.
• Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) this site has been established as a central repository for spatially referenced biogeographic accounts of introduced aquatic species.
• North American Land Change Monitoring System (NALCMS) was developed to depict information about land cover - the observed physical cover on the surface of the earth - and land cover change in a seamless, consistent, and automated way across North America at regular intervals.
• Northwest Habitat Institute contains regional Wildlife-Habitat and ancillary GIS data for the Columbia River Basin and the Pacific Northwest.
• OBIS-USA 2011 is a one-stop source for biogeographic data collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions--the Arctic, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes.
• Oil and Gas Map Sites is a list of sites from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection.
• Omernik's Level III Ecoregions The Omernik ecoregion system is hierarchical and considers the spatial patterns of both the living and non-living components of the region, such as geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, water quality, and hydrology.
• Pest Models: Insects, Mites, Diseases, Plants, and Beneficials Included here are descriptions of models of pests and plants, including phenologies and management strategies. The information is from published articles and have not necessarily been validated for use in California so use caution in applying the information to field situations.
• Pest Models and Degree Day Calculator This degree-day calculator has two branches. Run preset models that have been recommended by UC Cooperative Extension, or specify the thresholds and method of calculation for any model. Use weather data from the UC IPM weather database, a file you supply, or data you enter online.
• Relief Web maps from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) about disaster activities around the world.
• Rivers In Crisis represents the first global-scale initiative to quantify the impact of these human-induced stressors on human water security and riverine biodiversity.
• San Francisco Bay Area Regional Database (BARD) goal is to provide USGS mapping data that is not readily available on other USGS data sites. These include historical maps for the Bay area, individual elevation (DEM) quadrangles (1:24,000 scale), and county compressed orthoimagery. Links to other USGS data such as bathymetry are also provided.
• San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) data upload and access tools are listed on this page. A future goal is to develop new tools that will integrate, analyze, and model different types of data and to explore new ideas for displaying meaningful ecological information.
• Science.gov searches over 50 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 14 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results.
• Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS) assists conservationists worldwide in using GIS through communication, networking, scholarships, and training..
• SOPAC is an archive high-precision GPS data, particularly for the study of earthquake hazards, tectonic plate motion, crustal deformation, and meteorology.
• Spatial Decision Support Knowledge Portal can help you gain a systematic understanding of planning and decision making process, find relevant methods, tools and models, data sources, literature, and has other useful resources for your specific planning/decision making problem type in your application domain learn about case studies with project needs similar to yours.
• TeachSpatial is a web portal providing access to digital resources for teaching spatial concepts and principles, especially at the undergraduate level and tools to help educators and researchers explore spatial perspectives within disciplines, as well as facilitate the development of cross-disciplinary spatial learning objectives.
• TerraLook permits users to create their own collections of georeferenced JPEG satellite images.
• TNCmaps provides GIS data and maps for The Nature Conservancy's core conservation datasets.
• Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (TFDD) is a database intended for use in aiding the process of water conflict prevention and resolution. We have developed this database, a project of the Oregon State University Department of Geosciences, in collaboration with the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering.
• UN-Spider aims at providing universal access to all types of space-based information and services relevant to disaster management by being a gateway to space information for disaster management support; serving as a bridge to connect the disaster management and space communities; and being a facilitator of capacity-building and institutional strengthening.
• United Nations Environment Programme 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 500 different variables, as national, subregional, regional and global statistics or as geospatial data sets (maps), covering themes like Freshwater, Population, Forests, Emissions, Climate, Disasters, Health and GDP.
• US Degree Day Mapping Calculator use this site to create growing degree maps by state, region, or national in a GIS ready format.
• USGS Water Data for the Nation These pages provide access to water-resources data collected at approximately 1.5 million sites in all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
• Vegetation Characterization Program is a cooperative effort by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring - Vegetation Mapping Program to classify, describe, and map vegetation communities in more than 280 national park units across the United States.
• WMS/WFS Open Web Services for accessing (usually geographic) data. There are two basic service sets – the Web Feature Services (WFS) and the Web Map Services (WMS). The WFS is concerned with direct access to your data – reading, writing, and updating your features.
• World Database on Protected Areas is a foundation dataset for conservation decision making. It contains crucial information from national governments, non-governmental organizations, academic institutions, international biodiversity convention secretariats and many others.
• World Pipeline Maps provides links to maps showing pipelines in various areas of the world, including cross-border, international pipelines which originate or end in those regions.
• WWF Data Downloads The Conservation Science Program is developing its capacity to make available more of the data that WWF have created and/or improved.

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Map Resources

• Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It is one of the largest special collections libraries in the United States, with approximately 600,000 books, 55,000 linear feet of archival and manuscript collections, almost 8 million photographic prints and negatives (including the photographic morgues of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin and the San Francisco Examiner), and over 20,000 historical maps. Although the library itself is open to anyone who wishes to use it, access to some of its more valuable materials is restricted to researchers with a demonstrated need. The library website and the Online Archive of California offer access to online catalogs as well as to numerous collections in digital form.
• California Redistricting Maps In 2011 the California Citizens Redistricting Commission adopted final district maps for Congressional, State Assembly, State Senate and Board of Equalization districts.
• Cartographic Links a wealth of links from CSU Northridge.
• Challenger Relief Map of British Columbia is a monumental, hand built 80-by-76 foot topographic map of the province. Built by George Challenger and his family from 1947 to 1954, it features all of B.C.'s mountains, lakes, rivers and valleys in exact-scaled topographical detail.
• ColorBrewer a map design help tool for selecting colors.
• Cynthia Brewer's E Portfolio a collection of resources and references for her research areas on map design, color theory in cartography, topographic map design, multi-scale mapping, generalization, atlas mapping, and choropleth classification for maps in series.
• David Rumsey Map Collection focuses on 18th and 19th century North and South American cartographic materials. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript maps.
• Earth Sciences & Map Library at UC Berkeley, this collection covers the geosciences, including structural geology, tectonics, oceanography, seismology, geochemistry, geomorphology, glaciology, geophysics, atmospheric science, and planetary science; physical geography, climatology, and GIS; and cartography, aerial photos, and maps.
• ESRI Mapping Center is dedicated to helping you make great maps with ArcGIS! We do this by introducing you to the same concepts and techniques that professional cartographers use. Our goal is our users' demonstrated success in cartographic information design and presentation.
• GeoData@UC Berkeley allows users to discover the library's geospatial data holdings, preview geospatial data, create custom maps using only a web browser, and download geospatial data in a variety of formats. GeoData@UC Berkeley currently contains over 9,000 geospatial data layers from UC Berkeley, Harvard University, and MIT.
• Guide to San Francisco Bay Area Creeks this finder from the Oakland Museum of California Creek and Watershed Information Source will help you identify creeks and watersheds throughout the Bay Area, and point you to information about them.
• Historical Maps Online The intent of this project is to electronically publish the images of maps charting the last 400 years of historical development in Illinois and the Northwest Territory.
• HistoryPin is made up of photographic images, videos, audio clips and descriptive and narrative text. Photographic images can be pinned directly to the Historypin map by users. These images can be of any location - outdoors or indoors - at any time in the past.
• Library of Congress Geography & Map Reading Room has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including over 19,000 CDs/DVDs.
• Library of Congress Map Collections The focus this Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection.
• Map Projections is an introduction to cartography emphasizing map projections: their properties, applications and basic mathematics.
• Maps of War presents a special list of the best multimedia war maps from the world wide web.
• New York Public Library digital gallery of their map collection.
• Mapnificent Shows you areas you can reach with public transport in a given time. At its most basic level, Mapnificent shows a bright area on the map that contains all the destinations you can reach in a certain time frame. The service also allows users to combine two different maps (for you and a friend) to find a bar, coffee shop, museum or other landmark that's within a common time range.
• Old S.F. This site provides an alternative way of browsing the SFPL's incredible San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection.
• Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection is a general collection of more than 250,000 maps covering all areas of the world. Many of the maps are included in our Library Catalog. More than 11,000 map images from our collection are also available online.
• San Francisco Historical Creek Map Topographic map from the 1890s with original creeks in blue, marshes in green, and modern land fill in pink.
• Sanborn Map San Francisco Maptcha is a a simple, minimal-code interface doing rough placements of historical maps on modern geography of the newly-rescanned 1905 San Francisco Sanborn Insurance Atlas. Thanks to the combined efforts of the San Francisco History Center and the David Rumsey Map Collection, this historic glimpse of San Francisco in the years leading up to the devastating 1906 earthquake is now available in full color. Created for fire insurance purposes, Sanborn maps include precise detail on every building in city limits, including its use and construction.
• Shaded Relief is Tom Patterson's site to assist cartographers with the presentation of shaded relief, 3D landscapes, and related raster art on maps.
• Shaded Relief Drawing upon retired USGS cartographher Hal Shelton's work as inspiration, we examine how to make natural-color maps digitally from raster land cover data derived from satellite imagery. We work with USGS National Land Cover Dataset and MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields.
• Symbol and Picture Fonts The symbol or picture fonts that come with various programs can be great for adding small pictures to graphics and to word processing pages. Finding which keystroke makes which symbol or picture is made easy by following the instructions with this conversion chart tool.
• Symbol Libraries The Integration and Application Network (IAN) symbol libraries currently contain 2582 custom made vector symbols and icons designed specifically for enhancing science communication products with diagrammatic representations of complex processes.
• Topographic Maps This research guide serves as a guide to print topographic maps available in the Humboldt State University Library Atlas and Map Collection and either to interactively view topographic maps on the Internet or to download digital topographic maps for personal viewing or use in GIS programs.
• True Size of Africa Think you know how big Africa is? Think again.
• TypeBrewer a map design help tool for selecting typography.
• Yale University Library Map Collection digitized versions of certain selections from the collection are available online.

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Newsletters and Blogs

• Alastair Aitchison Blog about Spatial stuff with SQL Server, Bing Maps and more… Wrote about "Use OGR2OGR to create a CSV file containing WKT."
• Brain Pickings is the brain child of Maria Popova, a cultural curator and curious mind at large, who also writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and Design Observer, among others. She gets occasional help from a handful of talented contributors.
• Browser aims to help our readers discover the best writing available by recommending articles, interviews and books that are of interest to the intellectually curious reader.
• CartoTalk is a public forum for Cartography and Design.
• CSU Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology (COAST) was established in 2008 to integrate system-wide resources and promote interdisciplinary multi-campus collaborations to advance our knowledge of California's natural coastal and marine resources and the processes that affect them.
• Griffin Groups is a professional networking tool to plan, organize, collaborate, and publicize your next conservation project. Think of this site as a combination of Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, SharePoint and Google Docs.
• Grist has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a wry twist since 1999. Each day, we use our Clarity-o-Meter to draw out the real meaning behind green stories, and to connect big issues like climate change to daily life. We count on our users to bring their stories to the table, too -- through blogs, photos, and whatever else they care to share.
• Map is a public space installation by Aram Bartholl questioning the red map marker of the location based search engine Google Maps.
• Map History at IPRH This blog records the explorations of the Map History Reading Group, which was established by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Fall of 2008 under the care of S. Max Edelson, Associate Professor of History, and R. Jovita Baber, Assistant Professor of History.
• Michal Migurski is the technology head at Stamen, a San Francisco design and development studio focused on data visualization and map-making.
• Per Square Mile is a blog about density. It's about what happens when people live like packed sardines. It's also about what happens when people live so far apart they can go days without seeing another soul. It's about living amongst trees and prairies, and living in places miles away from them. It's about the trees and the prairies, too. And lakes and streams and animals and insects. In short, this is a blog about density of all types.
• PlanetSave is a decentralized, niche blog network, dedicated to covering those issues which are important to our collective and individual well-being, from humanity's survival to human happiness.
• Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is an environmental action group, combining the grassroots power of 1.3 million members and online activists with the courtroom clout and expertise of more than 350 lawyers, scientists and other professionals.
• NY Times Green a blog about energy and the environment.
• Top 10 Scientific Mnemonics Science is full of long lists of important information that can be very difficult to remember. A mnemonic is a small phrase or word that helps us to remember these things. This is a list of 10 mnemonics to help you learn some important scientific terms.
• Utne Environment Blog are digests of independent ideas and alternative culture. Not right, not left, but forward thinking. We're most interested in creating a conversation about everything.
• Views of the World This is the research blog of Benjamin D. Hennig at the University of Sheffield. Benjamin graduated 2005 in Geography with MSc research on hyperspectral remote sensing applications for coastal ecosystems conducted at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Bremerhaven/Germany). He joined the Social and Spatial Inequalities research group at the University of Sheffield/UK in late 2008. Here he made his PhD on visualising the social dimensions of our planet and continues to work as a research associate in a project on social inequalities in London.
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the world's largest private, nonprofit ocean research, engineering and education organization.

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Tools

• CartoDB is a GIS/web-mapping service built on PostgreSQL/PostGIS. They regularly give out free and discounted hosted accounts for conservation and education oriented projects.
• ESRI ArcGIS Resource Center is a site for community resources and integrated support.
• ESRI Campus Editing Template is a pre-configured ArcMap editing map, additional editing tools, and set of editing workflows for managing building, interior space and related exterior campus data.
• ESRI Patches and Service Packs Download the latest bug fixes (patches) or compilation of bug fixes (service packs) for ESRI software.
• Freebase is an open source power tool to fix, discover, experiment, connect and customize your data. Freebase's API allows you to perform searches and queries against Freebase's data, or to write data to Freebase.
• FWTools is a set of Open Source GIS binaries for Windows (win32) and Linux (x86 32bit) systems produced by me, Frank Warmerdam (ie. FW). The kits are intended to be easy for end users to install and get going with. No fudzing with building from source, or having to collect lots of interrelated packages. FWTools includes OpenEV, GDAL, MapServer, PROJ.4 and OGDI as well as some supporting components.
• GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats.
• Geographic Resources Analysis Support System Commonly referred to as GRASS, this is free Geographic Information System (GIS) software used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization.
• Geospatial Modelling Environment GME incorporates most of the functionality of its predecessor, HawthsTools, but with some important improvements. It has a greater range of analysis and modelling tools, supports batch processing, offers new graphing functionality, automatically records work-flows for future reference, supports geodatabases, and can be called programmatically.
• GIS Viewing Tools You Shouldn't Be Without! is a list from Geocomm of some the best viewing products available by some of the GIS Industry's leading software providers. Most of these products are very simple to use and are freely available (generally this gets the user a time-stamped evaluation copy or a "limited" functionality release). Best of all, these products will enable users to view, query, and manipulate data in SHP, E00, MIF, DXF, DWG, SDTS, DLG, DEM, Sid, TIFF, and numerous other data formats.
• Hawth's Analysis Tools is an extension for ESRI's ArcGIS (specifically ArcMap). It is designed to perform spatial analysis and functions that cannot be conveniently accomplished with out-of-the-box ArcGIS.
• Jennes Enterprises has created a number of free, custom-built applications for the ESRI ArcGIS software. These tools are built to work in all three license levels (ArcView, ArcEditor and ArcInfo). They are provided free of charge, but they require that you have access to ArcGIS Software.
• Movement Ecology Tools for ArcGIS (ArcMET) is a package of tools built and designed for analysis within the fields of movement ecology and wildlife conservation.
• Urban Network Analysis The City Form Research Group at MIT has released a toolbox for urban network analysis. This ArcGIS toolbox can be used to compute five types of graph analysis measures on spatial networks: Reach; Gravity; Betweenness; Closeness; and Straightness.

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