The National Geophysical Data Center has downloadable bathymetric and fishing maps for most of the US ocean coastline (not intended for navigation purposes, though). Map catalogs are broken down by geographic region, and maps are available in both small PDF preview format and large format downloads in either PDF or TIF format (the latter in gz compression, which will require an unzipping program like WinZip or ZipGenius). If you need the PDF maps in a editable graphic format, you can use a program like PDFCreator to “print” the PDF maps in full-resolution TIFF, JPG, or PNG formats. Maps are also not georeferenced (not GeoTiffs or GeoPDFs); I hope to cover some basic georeferencing options soon.
The full sets of data available from the NGDC include more bathymetric and relief data, geology/geophysical data, and earthquake/volcano data.
Published at January 3, 2008
in geology.
Living in the dry climate of the US Southwest, I’ve always found springs fascinating. For someone who grew up in the suburbs, water flowing continuously out of the ground with no pipeline or spigot somehow seems unnatural. But even more bizarre is hot water flowing out of the ground. NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center has an online queryable map of Thermal Springs of the United States:
“Thermal” doesn’t necessarily mean “hot”; the orange dots indicate water temperatures of 20C - 50C, while red dots run from 50C all the way up to boiling. But in all these cases, the water from the spring is elevated above what comes out of other nearby springs that aren’t heated geothermally. Most are concentrated in the more geologically-active western states, but with a few exceptions (most notably, the ones in Arkansas that include Hot Springs National Park). Using the “Identify” control to click on a thermal spring brings up its lat/long, water temperature, USGS quad, and more info.
Published at November 2, 2007
in geology.
The BBC has an article on the release of the first worldwide map of magnetic anomalies, deviations in the earth’s magnetic field due to effects from magnetized crustal rocks. Nice views of the magnetic striping on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge resulting from ocean-floor spreading (the driver of continental drift) and prehistoric reverses in the direction of the earth’s magnetic field:
From the Commission for the Geological Map of the World, which has links to this and other small-scale world geology maps for sale; the BBC article has a link to a free high-resolution PDF map of the magnetic anomaly map.
Portland State University’s Glaciers Online site has maps, photos and data for glaciers of the American West. Contents include:
- Shapefiles of glaciers and glaciated regions
- PDF maps from the 1975 government report “Mountain Glaciers Of The Northern Hemisphere”
- Glacier photos by location and time, highlighting the gradual retreat of glaciers with global warming
- A queryable online map
- Bibliography and links to more general info about glaciers (did you know there’s a glacier in Nevada?!)
Other mapping sites seem to be doing an Earth Day related post, so I’ll move this one up a bit. Energy production from the heat of the earth (geothermal energy) generates no carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, and could produce as much as 100,000 megawatts in the US alone by the year 2050. Here are some websites with geographic geothermal data, both maps and downloadable data.
Continue reading ‘Geothermal Resources Data’
A while back, I posted on an NOAA website that mapped carbon dioxide concentrations and emissions globally and locally. The Green Car Congress website has posted about a new resource that has maps of both emissions and sequestration, real and potential, for the US and Canada.
One site linked to has PDFs of the printable version of the Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada. The NatCarb site links to maps, static and interactive, showing both the sources and potential sinks/sequestration sites for carbon dioxide.
The United Nations Food And Agriculture Organization (FAO) maintains the FAO GeoNetwork, a data portal for worldwide digital geographic information from the FAO, other UN agencies, NGOs and other organizations. Despite the “Food And Agriculture” in the name, there’s far more than just agricultural-related data here.
The FAO Portal Page has a web search interface for tracking down data. Not all the data is available in downloadable digital format - for much of it, only the metadata is available. If you’re only interested in digital data, just check “Digital” next to “Map type” box. Search results can be random in nature, and sometimes data listed as being available in downloadable format isn’t. But you never know what useful stuff might pop up. For example, here’s a map of the southern tip of Africa, plotted from 1:125,00 scale coastline vector data for Africa and Arabia derived from SRTM data:
Recent coastline data with that kind of resolution isn’t always easy to find.
You can subscribe to an RSS feed that lists new datasets as they’re added to the portal. There’s also an interactive online mapping system for creating your own maps, and an extensive list of WMS servers with a wide variety of information you can add to WMS-compatible programs like MapWindow and Google Earth. You may not always find exactly what you need, but it’s definitely worth a look.
I love rocks. I love dirt. And I love the maps that show them. A good geology map is visually like a weird hybrid between a Peter Max poster and Jackson Pollock drip painting, but also tells a story spanning several billion years of Earth’s history. I’ve found a few websites where you can find and download geology maps in a variety of formats.
Continue reading ‘Rocks And Dirt - Geology And Soil Maps Of The US And World’
