Publicly Available Geographic Information Sources and Common Analysis Tools

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other UF/IFAS Extension publications, contact your county’s UF/IFAS Extension office. U.S. Department of Agriculture, UF/IFAS Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A & M University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Nick T. Place, dean for UF/IFAS Extension. Introduction Mapping or visualizing locational information helps understand the spatial variations and relationships among events; objects (e.g., land, water, and buildings); and their features; such as topography (e.g., elevation, height, and depth); soil; and land cover. Geographic information and geospatial data (i.e., about the geographic location of things on the Earth’s surface) are vital in many practical fields, including precision agriculture, natural resources management, flood zone mapping and management, and environmental assessment. Moreover, geospatial data can help identify priority areas for Extension and research programs and help us understand the geographic characteristics of an area of interest. The geospatial data are prepared and provided in multiple formats (e.g., vector, grid or raster, and tabular data) depending on the types of data (e.g., points, lines, polygons, images, and attributes). The data can be obtained from different sources (e.g., agencies and institutes that create and/or process the data) and collections (e.g., a set of geospatial data collected from diverse sources under a subject or theme). Many different tools can help view, manipulate, and investigate geospatial data. A geographic information system (GIS) is a piece of computer software specifically developed to create, store, manipulate, analyze, and visualize geospatial data. Depending on geospatial data’s intended use, there can be many different ways to obtain and manage the data. The rapid development of sensing, computing, and software technologies has increased availability of a wide variety of geospatial data. Such advances will make the use of geospatial data more common. When developing Extension programs, especially those related to demography, landscape, and climate at a large spatial scale, it is often necessary to have knowledge of the sources and kinds of geospatial data and tools that can handle the data. This publication introduces publicly available geospatial data, including elevation, land use, soil, satellite imagery, and other thematic maps and GIS software commonly used in spatial analysis. This article is designed to help Extension agents, Extension specialists, and concerned residents identify common geospatial data and tools and ways to access them.