Atlas of Canada
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/maps-tools-and-publications/maps/atlas-canada/10784
The Atlas of Canada provides geographic information and historical maps. Data is available for reference or downloads. It was one of the first digital atlases to be put online in the world. Data concerns the constantly changing landscape, diverse population. Maps. Charts. Tables. Analytical texts. Dynamic interactive maps, graphics, images and multi-media resources. »
Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
https://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/
Charles O. Paullin’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States contains nearly 700 individual maps spread across 166 plates, consisting of 33 maps on the natural environment, 47 maps documenting the evolution of European and later American cartographic knowledge about North America, historical topics concerning exploration and settlement, international and state boundariesdisputes, women’s suffrage to workmen’s compensation reforms, transportation, industries, agriculture, commerce, the distribution of wealth, and military history.
Bodleian Map Room
https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps
https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/maps/collections
The Digital Bodleian maps room includes almost 2,500 maps and atlases available on the digital platform. The Bodleian Libraries’ collection comprises 22 individual portolan charts and another 10 portolan atlases (from the 15th century to 1741, including work by Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish mapmakers); portolan charts are maps of coastal areas intended for maritime navigation, derived from mariners’ observations of compass bearings. The Todhunter Allen Collection of maps and county atlases (1573 to 1900). Ordnance Survey maps. The Bodleian holds an almost complete collection of all OS maps (1801 to the present), in excess of 300,000 sheets in total. WWI trench maps. Other map collections in Oxford include The Commonwealth and African Aerial Photograph Archive, comprising approximately 1.5 million aerial photographs of countries in Eastern, Southern, and Western Africa, as well as parts of Asia and the Americas.
British Library Digital Collections – Maps
https://www.bl.uk/catalogues-and-collections/digital-collections#
Maps of the UK comprises 19th and 20th century maps concerning the United Kingdom;
The Unveiling of Britain is a selection of maps of British Isles and their place in the wider world from 800 to 1600; Crace Collection of Maps of London includes more than 1,200 maps and plans of the capital. King George III Topographical Collection comprises 2,500 watercolours, drawings and prints from the vast collection amassed by King George III; Maps of Europe is collection of maps depicting places in Europe from 17th to 20th centuries; Maps of Asia concern the history of Britain’s relations and interests in Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries; Maps of Africa represent areas of special European interest in the 19th and 20th centuries; Maps of the Americas is collection from North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Vintage Online Map Collections containing more than 150,000 maps ranging from the 16th through 21st century. It includes rare maps of North and South America, world maps, and maps of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania, in the form of atlases, globes, wall maps, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts. Digitization of the collection includes over 114,000 items online, with regular additions. The site is free and open to the public.
European Space Agence (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover V2
http://www.esa-landcover-cci.org
The ESA Climate Change Initiative’s observations from space provides unique information assisting in understanding and management of climate change. The European Space Agency (ESA) has initiated a new programme, Global Monitoring of Essential Climate Variables to provide an adequate, comprehensive, and timely response to the extremely challenging set of requirements for (highly stable) long-term satellite-based products for climate, that have been addressed to Space Agencies via the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).
Esri Open Data Hub
« ArcGIS Hub is an easy-to-configure community engagement platform that organizes people, data, and tools through information-driven initiatives. Organizations of any type and any size, including government agencies, nonprofit groups, and academia, can maximize engagement, communication, collaboration, and data sharing using the ArcGIS Hub initiative-based approach. With ArcGIS Hub, organizations can leverage their existing data and technology and work together with internal and external stakeholders to track progress, improve outcomes, and create vibrant communities. » (from the website)
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
https://data.apps.fao.org/map/catalog/srv/eng/catalog.search#/home
Specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger, to achieve food security for all. 195 members, 194 countries and the European Union.
Geogratis
Free Geospatial Data in Canada. Access to data, including Environment Canada, the Atlas of Canada, national, regional and local. Environment Canada includes environmental technologies and prediction, pollution, climate and weather, soil, water, biodiversity, wildlife, and so on. The Atlas of Canada is free to print and download maps. The Alberta Geological Survey offers information and maps about mineral resources, groundwater, drift thickness, and bedrock and surface geology in Alberta. other regionally-based free data sources include the Calgary Region Open Data, Alberta Historical Orthophotos, the BC Community Mapping Network, and the Manitoba Land Initiative. The Community Infrastructure Mapping System, offers information related to employment and childcare centers, museums, archives, and historical sites in Newfoundland and Labrador, about universities, schools, libraries, colleges, and arts and culture centers as well as family resource centers, personal care and long term care homes, and a lot more. The Nova Scotia Open Data Portal offers information on environment and nature, government administration, economy and business, and social services. Data can be views by type – maps, forms, filtered news, files and documents, external databases, charts, and calendars. The Northwest Territories Geological Survey offers access to assessment reports, publications, data research tools, free to view and download open reports, new publications, and open files related to watersheds, lakes, mineral concentrates, surficial geology.
Global Land Survey (GLS)
http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest
Global Forest Change in a time-series analysis of Landsat images characterizing forest extent and change.
Global Map data archives
Fundamental digital geospatial information covering the whole land of the globe. Global Map data were developed under the cooperation of National Geospatial Information Authorities (NGIAs) of respective countries and regions. Geospatial information developed and authorized by NGIAs of respective countries and regions around the world. Digital geospatial information composed of eight layers being developed with consistent specifications, free to download.
Harvard Map Collection
https://library.harvard.edu/collections/scanned-maps
This Map Collection holds some 400,000 maps and 6,000 atlases. Many are available online in their virtual map collection.
Histoire du bâti Parisien
https://www.comeetie.fr/galerie/BatiParis/#12/48.8589/2.3491
This map of the construction periods of Parisian buildings and historical monuments of the capital,
allows you to navigate through the different strata of Parisian buildings, thanks to the APUR data, the buildings of Paris can be filtered according to the estimated dates of construction. The data on historical monuments are extracted from the Mérimée database managed by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and they have been geolocated thanks to Wikimedia Commons.
John Carter Brown Collections
https://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/JCBMAPS~1~1
John Carter Brown Library’s database of cartographic material. Individual maps.
Maps in books.
Library of Congress Maps Collection
https://www.loc.gov/maps/collections
https://www.loc.gov/collections/?fa=original-format:map
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with an important map collection available online.
Maxar Open Data Program
https://www.maxar.com/open-data
Open data for select sudden onset major crisis events by providing the most accurate data and analytics in times of disaster. “Organizations working on the front lines increase their impact and effectiveness by having access to this data.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS)
https://www.avl.class.noaa.gov/saa/products/welcome;jsessionid=B850C0B88B92F37F42AAFB8A49C0CDB6
Electronic library of NOAA environmental data. This web site provides capabilities for finding and obtaining those data. 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.
NASA Earth Observations (NEO)
Information about Earth’s ocean, atmosphere, and land surfaces. NEO strives to make global satellite imagery as accessible as possible “to help you picture climate and environmental changes as they occur on our home planet.” Browse and Download imagery of satellite data from NASA’s constellation of Earth Observing System satellites. 50 different global datasets are represented with daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and images are available in a variety of formats including JPEG, PNG, Google Earth, and GeoTIFF.
NASA Worldview
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov
Accessing past and present satellite imagery of the planet and events occurring around the world.
NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu
SEDAC develops and operates applications that support the integration of socioeconomic and earth science data. It is one of the Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It focuses on human interactions in the environment.
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
https://data.neonscience.org/data-products/explore
“The National Science Foundation’s National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a continental-scale observation facility operated by Battelle and designed to collect long-term open access ecological data to better understand how U.S. ecosystems are changing. NEON monitors ecosystems across the United States. Freshwater ecosystems include streams, rivers, and lakes while terrestrial ecosystems span from deserts to tropical forests. Explore our videos to learn more about what we do.” (from the website)
Natural Earth Data
http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/
Public domain cartographic dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Vector and raster data. Data themes are available in three levels of detail. For each scale, themes are listed on Cultural, Physical, and Raster category pages.
Newberry Collection
https://www.newberry.org/digital-resources-type
Founded in 1887, the Newberry collection comprises 1.6 million books, 600,000 maps, dating from the Middle Ages to the present. Online digital resources.
New York Public Library Fire Insurance Maps
https://www.nypl.org/node/80186
NYC Fire Insurance, Topographic and Property Maps
https://www.nypl.org/collections/nypl-recommendations/guides/fire-topo-property-maps
The New York Public Library’s online maps on international cartography, including 9000 pages digitized from 162 atlases being fire insurance maps, showing an intense level of detail, with its building footprints, lot dimensions, and owners.
New York Public Library Digital Collection -Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/divisions/lionel-pincus-and-princess-firyal-map-division
Established in 1898, this archive is one of the world’s most important map collections considering number, scope, unique holdings, and diversity, including more than 433,000 sheet map,s, 20,000 books and atlases from the 16th to the 21st centuries, ranging from the global to the local
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2014/03/28/open-access-maps
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
https://www.leventhalmap.org/collections/digital-collections/
One of the most significant digital collections map library in North American map library, available on two online repositories, both of which are free to access without registration: Digital Collections portal. Nearly 10,000 objects, primarily flat maps but also including some bound atlases, ephemera, and series, are available on our Digital Collections portal and the Internet Archive. Over 300 atlases and books, consisting of bound format, non-oversize materials, are scanned and uploaded to the Internet Archive. Other digital discovery tools include the Atlascope project with over a hundred fire insurance and real estate atlases of Boston and suburbs, showing detail down to the parcel and building level from 1860–1940, the Digital Collections portal is part of Digital Commonwealth, a consortium of more than 180 cultural heritage organizations across Massachusetts, and the uploaded full-resolution images to the photo-sharing site Flickr. You can browser our images here.
OpenStreetMap
https://gisgeography.com/openstreetmap-download-osm-data/
The largest community of cartographers in the world editing the geography of the planet: “OpenStreetMap is like the Wikipedia of maps.”
Natural and land use features (beaches, forests and farms); Places of interests (restaurants, hotels, police stations, churches and museums); Transportation features (bus stops, traffic signals and stop signs); Populated places (cities, towns, villages and localities).
Open Topography
“The mission of the OpenTopography Facility is to:
Democratize online access to high-resolution (meter to sub-meter scale), Earth science-oriented, topography data acquired with lidar and other technologies. Provides Web service-based data access, processing, and analysis capabilities that are scalable, extensible, and innovative. Partners with public domain data holders to leverage OpenTopography infrastructure for data discovery, hosting and processing.
Osher Map Library & Smith Center for Cartographic Education
The OML is located at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. The collection has a global scope and documents date back to 1475; it includes 75,000 items available to view online for free for educational and research purposes.
Persuasive Cartography at Cornell University
https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu
This collection of “persuasive” cartography comprises maps that emphasize opinion over geographic truth, with 310 maps online, Concerning religious, political, military, commercial, moral and social messages.
Sentinel Satellite Data
https://scihub.copernicus.eu/dhus/#/home
Open Access Hub providing complete, free and open access to Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-5P data. “Europe’s eyes on Earth”
Sentinel-2 10m land cover time series of the world from 2017-2021.
https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d3da5dd386d140cf93fc9ecbf8da5e31
Produced by Impact Observatory, Microsoft, and Esri, this layer displays a global map of land use/land cover (LULC) derived from ESA Sentinel-2 imagery at 10m resolution, generated each year from Impact Observatory’s deep learning AI land classification model developed by the National Geographic Society.
Terra Populus
Integrated population and environmental data across disciplinary scientific domains, data integrated across time, space and scientific domains, to study change and conduct comparative research. Data and services are available free of charge.
UNEP Environmental Data Explorer
https://unepgrid.ch/en/platforms
“The Global Resource Information Database – Geneva (GRID-Geneva), is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and the University of Geneva (UniGe). With a team of 20 Environment Data Scientist, GRID-Geneva main role is to transform data into information and knowledge to support the decision making process related to environmental issues.” (from the website)
UNAVCO – Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Data
https://www.unavco.org/data/sar/sar.html
The SAR archive of the UNAVCO Data Center has several SAR data collections, including SAR data acquired by the WInSAR consortium and the GeoEarthScope project. Data is organized into the EarthScope ESA and CSA SAR collections.
United States Inter-agency Elevation Inventory
https://coast.noaa.gov/inventory/#
Nationwide listing of known publicly available high-accuracy topographic and bathymetric source elevation data for the United States and its territories. Displays data set boundaries and provides information about the elevation data but does not host the data itself. Links to data, metadata, and reports are included when available. Accessed via map services, and the terrestrial information is available as a GIS layer for download.
USGS Earth Explorer
https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov
EarthExplorer (EE) provides online search, browse display, metadata export, and data download for earth science data from the archives of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for searching, viewing, and downloading data.
USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/topoexplorer/index.html
The USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection and Explorer includes 178,000 maps dating from 1882 to 2006, previously available only in print format, available as web viewable images and free, downloadable digital files. The collection includes all scales and all editions of the topographic maps published since 1879, at scales ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:250,000.
USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection
The National Map’s Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC provides a digital repository of USGS 1:250,000 scale and larger maps printed between 1884, the inception of the topographic mapping program, and 2006.
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
This interface was created by the National Geologic Map Database project (NGMDB), in support of topographic mapping program managed by the National Geospatial Program (NGP).
cartographic observatory for architecture 