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Alberta & Canada

Custom Alberta Spatial Database (CASD) from Free Digital Sources

Canada-Wide Datasets Alberta-Specific Datasets Other GIS Data "Goodies" Info on Metadata & Documentation

The following resources emphasize Alberta content and include links to useful data web sites for a variety of vector and raster digital data from online Canadian and Alberta sources for use in creating your own free custom database.

Click to download the outline notes or the online slide show for the CASD workshop. Stay tuned for downloadable instruction sets on how to process the data.

Links to some useful web sites containing downloadable GIS data:

Title	Description
Canada-Wide Datasets
Atlas of Canada	cartographic and geographic information on Canada, including the 1:2 Million Base Dataset and others
Geoconnections	the Discovery Portal provides access to millions of Canadian geospatial data products, including satellite imagery, topographic data, and aerial photography - essentially a one-stop for Gobase, Geogratis, Atlas of Canada, etc.
GeoBase	a common, up-to-date and maintained base of quality geospatial data for all of Canada with access to Administrative Boundaries, Canadian Digital Elevation Data (CDED), Landsat 7 Orthoimages
GeoGratis	download FREE Canadian spatial data... everything from Landsat, RADARSAT, Earth Observation Data, Atlas Vectors, National Scale Frameworks, CGIS (Canadian Geographic Information Systems), Vector/Tabular Data...
NLWIS	Agriculture Canada's National Land and Water Information Service includes data for CLI, generalized landcover, climate, agriculatural census, and watershed boundaries for the Canadian Prairies
CanSIS	Agriculture Canada's Canadian Soil Information System
National Ecological Framework	GIS datasets for the different layers of the ecological framework
EcoMAP	info and download link for The State of Canada's Ecosystems in Maps
NRCan LSD	Legal Surveys Division's National Framework Canada Lands Administrative Boundary (CLAB) Level 1
NRCan GSC	Geological Survey of Canada's digital copy of the Surficial Materials of Canada
NRCan CFS Climate	Natural Resources Canada Canadian Forest Service Great Lakes Forest Centre Regional, National and International Climate Modeling
CCIS	Canadian Climate Impacts and Scenarios data and information generated outside of the CCIS Project Gridded Observed Climatologies for 1961-1990
NRCan CFS EOSD Landcover	circa 2000-2003 satellite classification of the forested regions of Canada (click here for download access)
Statistics Canada Census	2006 Census of Population Products and Services - includes GIS boundary file and summary tables
Species at Risk	online mapping of species at risk in Canada (plants and animals)
Alberta-Specific Datasets
AGS	Alberta Geological Survey (click here for Digital Datasets)
AGRASID	Agricultural Region of Alberta Soil Inventory Database
ANHIC NRSR ANHIC ESA	Alberta Natural Heritage Information Centre's GIS data: NRSR = Natural Regions and Subregions; and ESA = Environmentally Sensitive Areas
TPR Protected Areas	Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation's Land Reference manual includes protected areas and Crown Reservations digital data
SRD Forest Health	Sustainable Resource Development's Insect and Disease Surveys
SRD Spatial Wildfire	Sustainable Resource Development's Historical Wildfires
AltaLIS	Alberta Land Information System's boundary files
ABT Lithoprobe	Alberta Basement Transect (ABT) project has data for transect lines, township and range, and other data
Other GIS Data "Goodies"
NTS Indexes	GIS vectors of map sheet index grids for the Natural Resources Canada National Topographic System
Geography Network From ESRI	among tons of other data, this has a useful index grid for the World Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zones
Landsat WRS and Path/Row	index grids for Landsat's Worldwide Reference System and Path/Row
LP DAAC	Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center - processing, archiving, and distribution of satellite data
GLCF	largest free source of satellite data made available by the University of Maryland's Global Landcover Facility
Grime's File Formats	Grime's “File Formats in GIS, 3D & Imagery and What to Treat Them With…” - a list of file formats in GIS and tools to use for processing/viewing
Info on Metadata and Documentation
FGDC	Federal Geographic Data Committee standards, community and other online resources
ESRI Profile of the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata	an ESRI technical paper on how to make metadata more accessible and useful on a daily basis when browsing, searching, and managing data
Suggested data citation format	Author. Title from series [format]. Edition. Scale. Series, sheet number. Place of publication: publisher, date. (date accessed).

Email Charlene if you know of any other links that should be included here.