The USGS has announced that the National Atlas will be taken out of service as of September 30, 2014. According to the detailed product availability information, much of the data will be available via the to-be-enhanced National Map system, or as data downloads "at no cost" from Earth Explorer". This transition appears to be mostly a resource realignment (basically reducing the number of sources and web sites they need to maintain. In addition, the USGS has also announced that "[L]ater this year we will deliver these new framework datasets at one million-scale: networked hydrography, updated streams and water bodies …

Cartographica makes retrieving and displaying Web Map Service data very simple. Cartographica comes out of the box with several WMS links already incorporated into the program. However, the list of available WMS data available online is much broader than what is included as a link with the program. In this post I will show you how to find additional WMS data and then how to add and display the data using Cartographica. The methods for finding WMS data is as much an art as a science. The most effective method for finding WMS data is doing a Google search to …

Last week's House hearing on the state of Federal geospatial data management encouraged me to search out good places for both free and inexpensive GIS data. Basically, I wanted to create a brief overview about good places to find GIS data. I will mostly likely post several blog postings on this issue as I discover new places to find data. With the growing number of users learning to use GIS in both their professional and private lives, the need for an organized data management system is apparent. Unfortunately, there is currently not a one-stop-shop for GIS data, and as more …

OK, maybe it isn't your name, but it is the name of your town, and the names of millions of towns and places throughout the world. The USGS's Geonames (or GNIS) site contains downloadable datasets with names of cities, towns and other places. A companion site from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) contains foreign place names.

The US Geological Survey has a pair of sites online showing galleries of various maps about the hurricanes Rita and Katrina. These pages are part of an ongoing effort by the USGS to provide a community-based site that points users at mapping and other geospatial sites.