Embedded Files
CARTOGRAPHY BLOGS Etc.
Cartotalk A useful site for the latest GIS and cartographic updates.
GIS At Bucknell I found this site as a useful page for links to various GIS programs and opportunities.
GIS at the Overseas School of Colombo (OSC). Blog posts and reflections from the workshop leader in Sri Lanka.
Mappamond This commercial site has regular updates on GIS data, developments etc. posted on their blog. The focus is on GIS application in the environment.
Story Maps Blog: A blog for ESRI's Story Maps
COMMERCIAL MAPS & IMAGERY
Asitrium: European commercial geospatial imagery company hosting the SPOT satellites and others. There are some sublime relief models among their examples.
East View Cartographic. This commercial company advertises a wide range of maps and GIS data that you can commercially buy. Prices seem high to me given what is available freely. They even advertise 1:50,000 Sri Lanka sheets at @ US $49! These can be bought here in Colombo for about $1.50! Geo referenced raster images of all these sheets, with associated shapefiles for rivers, contours etc., are also available here through the Survey Department.
Digital Globe The is the company that provides much of the imagery in Google Earth. They have taken over Geo Eye a global leader in geospatial imagery (including the IKONOS satellite imagery), also used in Google Earth.
Planet Dove: A new company with a constellation of satellites providing daily earth imagery of every major land mass at a high 3 m resolution in four bands.
MapMart: Commercial providers of mapping data.
MBM Systems A German company specializing in 3D maps
EARTH OBSERVATION
Earth Observatory: NASA's superb site that highlights satellite photography of the earth to "explore the causes and effects of climatic and environmental change."
Earth Resources Observation & Science (EROS) Run by the USGS this is a great site that highlights temporal changes using Landsat and other remote sensing imagery. They have a superb gallery of comparative studies from around the world.
Global Land Cover Facility (University of Maryland) One of the best portals for accessing a wide variety of data showing land cover. They specialize in various kinds of remote sensing data from satellites (Aster, Landsat, MODIS, Quick Bird, SRTM etc.). Data can be downloaded via FTP through their Earth Science Data Interface.
Earth Now! Landsat Earth Observer (USGS). This site shows the (nearly) real time view of the Landsat satellites as they pass over the United States & Canada. These can then be downloaded on the GloVis (USGS Global Visualization Viewer) site.
TerraLook permits users to create their own collections of geo-referenced JPEG satellite images. TerraLook images allow for visual interpretation and comparison without the need for complicated software.
ToppoMapper. This site uses a mosaic from Landsat 7 to visualize any place in the world.
EXEMPLAR MAPS
ArcGIS Map Gallery Samples of maps made with ESRI's ArcGIS, the software that we use at OSC.
UNOSAT Maps The UN's geospatial arm tasked with providing maps for a variety of hazards and man-made disaster areas. There are excellent maps on India, Sri Lanka and other individual countries in their online catalog.
UNEP A great site for exemplar maps.
University of Texas Library
GIS/ REMOTE SENSING IN SOUTH ASIA
Bangladesh Local Government Engineering Department A site with downloadable digital maps from Bangladesh.
BHUVAN:The very useful portal for spatial data gathered from the Indian Remotes Sensing Organization (ISRO). You can view and download a a whole range of different spatial data from India. Being signed in is useful for downloading Awfis imagery etc. For data click on the following link. or the Thematic Mapper.
Biodiversity Information System: Created by the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIR) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to display and map the biodiversity of India. The data has vegetation types at a 1:50,000 scale.
Center for Environmental & Geographical Information Services (CGIS) One of the leading GIS centers in Bangladesh
Mizoram Remote Sensing Agency (MIRSAC): This is the state agency running all remote sensing and mapping jobs for other state government agencies. I had a chance to visit them in January 2012 and was impressed with their productivity and impressive atlases (land use, earthquake, etc.). Unfortunately most of their work has to be seen in their office and is not available online.
National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC): This is India's premier RS organization, based in Hyderabad. It falls under the space agency Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Reef Base: An online GIS that focuses on the state of coral reefs around the world. There is useful data and imagery on Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Sentinel Asia A Japanese funded organization with multiple nodes that helps channel spatial data to recipients who need it to deal with disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding etc.)
Spatial Database for Climate Change Mapping in South Asia.Authored by IWMI
Survey of India Not the most user-friendly or dynamic site, but home to the oldest mapping organization in South Asia. They have more recently added a Web Mapping Service (WMS) and better links to their products.
University of Texas Library. The US army published a 1:250,000 series of maps on South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) in 1955. They are all available for download here!
Western Ghats GeoPortal: Thanks to the French Institute, ATREE and others.
Western Michigan University US Army Maps: This is a project led by our family friend Professor David Dickason to scan and georeference a treasure trove of 1:250,000 maps of South Asia that were published in the early 1950s. The base map is on Bing Maps.
GIS SOFTWARE (INCLUDING ONLINE OPTIONS)
ArcGIS Online ESRI's site where you can download online mapping data and create maps.
Bing Maps Microsoft's answer to Google Maps
Earth Explorer: USGS visualizer where you can download GeoTiff files (spatial images that have a spatial reference)
ERDAS This is the principal remote sensing software that is being used by global agencies working with spatial information. They have a host of applications.
ESRI ArcGIS Explorer similar to Google Earth but with handy interfaces to the ArcMap software that we use. FREE
GeoMapApp A downloadable software[package for visualizing and mapping terrain. Provided by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University This is being used be several cartographers, such as Ronald Blakey, to produce stunning maps of the earth's surface.. FREE
Global Mapper An easy to use and fast software package to view DEMs and other spatial data. It is modestly priced and you can download a trial version for free.
Google Map Maker Newly introduced from Google
Google My Maps Versatile basic map and GIS option from Google.
Google Earth The standard Earth viewer that has revolutionized the way we see the world
Maperitive Maperitive is a FREE desktop application for drawing maps based on OpenStreetMap and GPS data. You can define what gets on the map and how it is painted. You can also export these maps into bitmaps and SVG files and print them.
MapInfo Commercial Microsoft Windows–based mapping and geographic analysis application GIS software
Open Street Map:
Q-GIS Open source GIS software fro both PC and Mac platforms
GIS EDUCATION/ARC LESSONS
Chinese International School GIS. CIS, under the leadership of David Brian, has been running an innovative program of integrating GIS into IB courses (both MYP and DP) for several years. They have generously uploaded lessons and data here.
ESRI GIS Education (This useful site has prepackaged lesson plans with data ready for free downloads)
Geographical Association A UK based Geography Education association with numerous useful links including this set of pages on web based GIS applications for education
Google Earth for Educators: Hints and tricks for educational uses of Google Earth
Landsat Program. This is a NASA-based site that details many aspects of the Landsat program. There are links to educational tutorials and further links.
LANDSAT DATA
Earth Explorer This is the easiest way to access the different sets of Landsat Data as well as a host of other freely available spatial data. Avoid using Google Chrome on this because of the need for updated Java.
Landsat Explorer: An excellent new site that allows access to a treasure trove of Landsat images and allows limited manipulation. Provided through an arcgis.com account.
Global Land Cover (GLCV) NASA recommends this as one of several places to download Landsat data.
Landsat (GloVis) PortalThe portal to download Landsat data. GLS data sets are created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) using Landsat images. These global minimal-cloud cover, orthorectified Landsat data products support global assessments of land-cover, land cover-change, and ecosystem dynamics such as disturbance and vegetation health.
Global Land Cover (GLCV) NASA recommends this as one of several places to download Landsat data.
LANDST EXEMPLAR MAPS
LANDSAT PUBLICITY
Dangermond, Jack. "Understanding our world with Landsat Data and ArcGIS." ArcNews. Summer 2013. Web & PDF.
Landsat Science. "Benefits to People. " NASA. 5 November 2013. Web. 7 November 2013.
LANDSAT TUTORIALS
Simmon, Robert. "How to Make a True Color Landsat Image." NASA Earth Observatory. October 2013.Web. 25 October 2013.
LANDSAT VIEWING
Change Matters Landsat Viewer (from ESRI)
CLASlite: A site with links to software developed by the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. The software helps to track rates of deforestation using temporal images collected by the Landsat satellites.
Landsat Look This is an USGS hosted, ESRI powered interface to view Landsat imagery introduced in 2012. Arc NewsFall 2012 has a good write up on the powerful capabilities of the site.
MAPPING DATA
ASTER DEM. This site hosts a large set of Digital Elevation Model (DEMs) that is one of the most updated. It can be downloaded as compressed tiles. We have the world collection in our database for easy use. They are easily viewed on Global Mapper. In October 2011 an updated version was released by METI and NASA.
Bathymetry from National Geophysical Mapping Center. Useful for oceanic (bathemetic) data.
Center for International Earth Science Information at Columbia University. This site hosts a variety of very useful information including population and economic datasets based on UN data.
Digital Elevation Model Discovery Portal A site for accessing a wide range of DEMs for download.
**Earth Resources Observation Science (EROS)** USGS portal with links to GloVis, Landsat data etc.
ESRI ArcGIS Online. A great place to download baseline maps, collaborate with others and view exemplar maps.
**Global Land Cover Facility (University of Maryland)** One of the best portals for accessing a wide variety of data showing land cover. They specialize in various kinds of remote sensing data from satellites (Aster, Landsat, MODIS, Quick Bird, SRTM etc.). Data can be downloaded via FTP through their Earth Science Data Interface.
Global Network for Geospatial Health-GSNSIS Data. An important source for health metadata.
Humanitarian Response. This is a very useful data portal for a variety of countries are doing reileif work. The Sri Lanka data (1:250,000 scale) was made available in October 2012.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory A useful site for data and images with links to counterparts in the Japanese
Mountain Geoportal (ICIMOD) Excellent resources on the Himalayan area.
NASA Earth Observatory An amazing site that publishes daily and weekly imagery from various (MODIS etc.) satellites
Natural Earth This sites provides excellent base maps.
Open Data A portal for Open Data set up by ESRI (ArcGIS)
Socio Economic Data & Application Center (SEDAC): A useful online search interface from NASA, developed by the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) that provides integrated searching of multiple catalogs.
Spatial Database for Climate Change Mapping in South Asia. New from IWMI
Sri Lanka Urban Development Authority (UDA) Geoportal Unfortunately this site was not activated though it had the intention of making the data publicly available. We have useful land use data of our area thanks to their good offices.
US Maps & Data United States government link featuring a variety of maps. "Data.gov has integrated the Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) portal and catalog, and added some exciting improvements to both the user interface as well as the underlying infrastructure."
IWMI Water Data Portal Good site for a variety of vector layers, including Sri Lanka and other countries.
Reverb/ECHO This is the new NASA "Earth Observing System" data portal that will channel all of their spatial data for public use.
UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre A useful site with links to data sets focusing on biodiversity.
World Bank Maps. A good site for online maps of human and economic development data. You can also get into the World Bank Data using ArgGIS online.
FURTHER EDUCATION IN GIS
Western Michigan University W.E. Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change
OTHER
Barttlet Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis Linked to UCL (London) with published case studies that are useful for HL Geography students.
Biodiversity Informatics Facility: A useful portal of information, data etc. sponsored by the Center for Biodiversity Conservation (at the American Museum of Natural History), NOAH, NASA and others.
Geo Community. Portal for GIS users, professionals with data pages etc.
Google Earth Outreach. A portal of information linking users to a wide variety of projects using Google tools (Earth, Maps etc.) for positive change.
Google Earth Engine An up and coming site of amazing magnitude that is hosting a wide variety of spatial and temporal data (Landsat, MODIS imagery etc.) for users to be able to freely access.
Hubble Telscope Site: For amazing views of space and more from the ground breaking Hubble Telescope.
Shaded Relief A site to help with digital elevation models and modeling relief.
Milton, MA GIS. An example of how a local municipal area (my US neighborhood) used GIS for public information.
Space Science & Engineering Center. From the University of Wisconsin. Has excellent links to weather satellites etc.
WWF Ecoregions Links Page A good site for lining into various conservation initiatives using remote sensing and GIS in their work.
PRINT RESOURCES FOR TEACHING GIS
Bolstad, Paul. GIS Fundamentals: A First Text on Geographic Information Systems, Fifth Edition. Acton, MA,Xanedu, 2016. Print. Web Resource Link, (GIS lessons).
Clarke, Keith. Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems, 5th Edition. Upper Saddle River, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011. Print.Companion website (password required)
Harder, Christian and Clint Brown, Eds. The ArcGIS Book, 2nd Edition. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. 2017. Web. PDF.
Heywood, Ian, Sarah Cornelius and Steve Carver. An Introduction to Geographic Information Systems, 4th Edition. Essex,Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011. Print. Companion website. Instructor's Resources.
Horning, Ned et al. Remote Sensing for Ecology & Conservation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.
Jensen, John R. Introductory Digital Image Processing: A Remote Sensing Perspective, 4th Edition. Glenview, IL: Pearson GIS, 2016. Print.
Jensen, John R. Remote Sensing of the Environment: An Earth Resource Perspective. Upper Saddle River, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007.
Kimerling, A. Jon. et al. Map Use, Eighth Edition. Redlands, ESRI Press, 2016. Print. Web Link. Review by Daniel G. Cole.
O'Connor, Peter. GIS for A-Level Geography. United Kingdom: ESRI UK & Geographical Association, 2008. Print.
Palmer, Anita et al. Mapping Our World Using GIS: Our World GIS Education. Redlands, ESRI Press, 2009. Print.
VIDEO RESOURCES FOR TEACHING GIS
Penn State Geospatial Revolution ( a useful video introduction to changes in technology and their applications)
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