Explore Maps of the United States from 1884 to 2006
The U.S. Geological Survey and Esri are working together to make over 178,000 maps of the United States available to the public via an online map explorer. The USGS Historical … Read more
USGS Map Engravings for Sale This Summer
Between the 1880s and the 1950s, the USGS produces engravings used to reproduce topographic and geologic maps within the agency. Many of the excess engravings … Read more
Alternatives to GIS Data During the U.S. Government Shutdown
The U.S. Government shutdown has led to the unfortunate darkening of many of its sites. Many sites that offer sources of GIS data have been … Read more
Natural-color Shaded Relief Maps by Hal Shelton
Hal Shelton is a cartographer most notable for his natural-color maps done for Jeppeson Map Company in the 1950s and 1960s.
Crowdsourcing with the USGS
The U.S. Geological Survey is putting out a call for citizen scientists (that means you) to help them track and gather geographic information on what is happening all around the globe. Here are the some of the most well-known USGS crowdsourcing projects.
USGS Map Services for The National Map
There are several map services that USGS supports. These allow you to view nationwide data from The National Map in your GIS software. To use these in … Read more
Timelapse Satellite Imagery – View Changes on Earth over Time
The series of Landsat satellites has been collecting global imagery continuously since 1972. A total of eight satellites and millions of pictures (and trillions of … Read more
SDTS – GIS Data Standard
SDTS stands for Spatial Data Transfer Standard. SDTS was a standard for transferring earth-referenced spatial data across disparate computer programs. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released SDTS … Read more
Mapping Access to Safe Water
World Water Day is held on March 22 each year as a way to bring global attention to the world’s freshwater resources. Started by the … Read more
Where to Look for Historical Maps
The use of extracting data from old paper maps is growing in popularity as a method to understanding historical geography. David Ramsey popularized the method … Read more
National Forest Map and GIS Data
Josef Kellndorfer and Wayne Walker of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) worked with the USGS and the US Forest Service over a six year period to create this forest map of the United States.
Map Projections and Coordinate Systems
What are Map Projections? The shape of the earth is roughly spherical wheres as maps are two dimensional. Map projection is a set of … Read more