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Free GIS Datasets

 Map sources

  • Natural Earth – Vector: Includes coastline, land, oceans, islands, rivers, lakes, glaciated areas, and bathymetry. Available at multiple levels of detail Natural Earth – Raster: Includes various raster images, intended for use as backgrounds for other data, for example, hypsometric tints, satellite-derived land cover, shaded relief etc.
  • Global Map: A set of consistent GIS layers covering the whole globe at 1km resolution including transportation, elevation, drainage, vegetation, administrative boundaries, land cover, land use, and population centers. Produced by the International Steering Committee on Global Mapping.
  • DIVA-GIS Country Data: A collection of data collected from a number of the sources below – includes administrative areas, inland water, roads and railways, elevation, land cover, population and climate. Probably the easiest place to get a simple set of data for a specific country.
  • UNEP GEOdata: A wide range of data from the United Nations Environment Programme including Global Forest Cover, Global Potential Evapotranspiration, Global Average Monthly Temperatures, Dams, Watershed Boundaries and much more.
  • MapCruzin: GIS aggregation site including wide range of data for various areas of the world. Some datasets appears to be of low quality, but others are good.
  • GeoNetwork: GIS aggregation site including a wide range of data under various categories (both human and physical).
  • European Environment Agency: Maps and datasets from the European Environment Agency, covering a huge range of physical geography and environmental topics. Europe only.
  • Corine Land Cover Map: Europe only. Satellite derived land cover, available as at 1990, 2000 and 2006 in vector and raster formats. 100m and 250m resolutions.
  • GLOBCOVER: Global land cover dataset at 300m resolution from the MERIS sensor on the ENVISAT satellite.
  • Climate Change Initiative Land Cover map: Global land cover dataset at 300m resolution, for 1998-2002, 2003-2007, 2008-2012. In many ways the ‘successor’ to GLOBCOVER.
  • MODIS Global Land Cover: 1km and 4km resolution global land cover maps derived from MODIS images.
  • UMD GLC: 1km resolution global land cover maps from the University of Maryland created using a classification tree approach from MODIS data
  • EarthEnv Global Consensus Land Cover: 1km-resolution global land cover, produced by integrating many other land cover datasets, and providing information on the consensus (or lack of consensus) between them
  • Global Land Cover by National Mapping Organisations: 1km data of land cover for the globe, with a classification scheme based on the UN FAO LCCS, facilitating easy comparison with other land cover products.