Subject Librarian
United States Data Resources
Big Ten Academic Alliance Geoportal
The BTAA Geoportal provides discoverability and facilitates access to geospatial resources. The resources in the portal are selected and curated by librarians and geospatial specialists at twelve research institutions in the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Resources include GIS datasets, web services, and digitized historical maps.
ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Online hosts maps and data that can be used in a GIS. Sign up for a free account or use an Organizational Account to search the data holdings. UW-Madison's Organizational URL is: uw-mad.maps.arcgis.com
Living Atlas (ArcGIS)
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is the foremost collection of geographic information from around the globe. It includes maps, apps, and data layers to support your work.
Atlas of the Biosphere : Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE)
"The idea behind this website is simple: gather as much information about the environment as possible, and deliver it to as many people as possible. We are dedicated to bringing environmental information to the widest possible audience. Although we specifically target high school to university students and teachers, anyone can benefit from a stroll through our collection".
Cropland Data Layer (USDA)
The Spatial Analysis Reseach Section released the 2009 Cropland Data Layer (CDL) for ALL Continental US States. All state products were issued in unsmoothed format, with the exception of Florida (i.e., citrus smoothing applied) with associated metadata. The file sizes are quite large and range between 13 - 100 megabytes per download.
DATA.GOV (Tabular and Statistical data from federal agencies) Data can be limited by "type" as "geospatial".
EarthExplorer: USGS Geographic Data Download
Quick links to many of the popular USGS raster datasets for direct downloading including Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), National Elevation Dataset (NED), National Land Use & Land Cover (LULC), and the National hydrology Dataset (NHD).
ELEVATION DATA: United States Interagency Elevation Inventory
The U.S. Interagency Elevation Inventory displays high-accuracy topographic and bathymetric data for the United States and its territories. The project is a collaborative effort between NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey, with contributions from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This resource is a comprehensive, nationwide listing of known high-accuracy topographic data, including lidar and IfSAR, and bathymetric data, including NOAA hydrographic surveys, multibeam data, and bathymetric lidar. This inventory was completed May 2012 and will be updated annually.
FEMA Map Service Center
Flood Rate Insurance Maps [FIRMs] on the Web
Forest Service Geospatial Clearinghouse (USFS)
Raster and vector forest data, state and private forestry assessment data, maps, etc.
Geospatial Data Gateway (United States Dept. of Agriculture)
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. This site includes county and state level data, including but not limited to: DRGs, DEMs, census data, land cover, quad indexes, digital orthophotos, etc.
Midwestern Regional Climate Center (and Cli-MATE data portal)
The Midwestern Regional Climate Center is a cooperative program between the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Our center is a partner in a national climate service program that includes NCEI, five other Regional Climate Centers, and State Climate Offices. The NCEI is part of the Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The MRCC serves the nine-state Midwest region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin). Our services and research help to better explain climate and its impacts on the Midwest, provide practical solutions to specific climate problems, and allow us to develop climate information for the Midwest on climate-sensitive issues such as agriculture, climate change, energy, the environment, human health, risk management, transportation, and water resources.
Mineral Resources Data System
MRDS is a collection of reports describing metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources throughout the world. Included are deposit name, location, commodity, deposit description, geologic characteristics, production, reserves, resources, and references. It subsumes the original MRDS and MAS/MILS. MRDS is large, complex, and somewhat problematic. This service provides a subset of the database comprised of those data fields deemed most useful and which most frequently contain some information, but full reports of most records are available as well.
National Historical GIS - Historic US census demographic data and boundary files back to 1790
The National Landcover Database
The MRLC, a consortium of federal agencies who coordinate and generate consistent and relevant land cover information at the national scale for a wide variety of environmental, land management, and modeling applications, have been providing the scientific community with detailed land cover products for more than 30 years. Over that time, NLCD has been one of the most widely used geospatial datasets in the U.S., serving as a basis for understanding the Nation’s landscapes in thousands of studies and applications, trusted by scientists, land managers, students, city planners, and many more as a definitive source of U.S. land cover.
The National Wetlands Inventory
Digital wetlands data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Branch of Habitat Assessment.
NOAA NowCoast
National Weather Service GIS data and maps available from the NowCoast Map Viewer.