Free Geography Tools

July 23, 2010 6:07 AM

Free Geography Tools is Leszek Pawlowicz's invaluable collection of GIS links.

Some recent highlights:

-Dynamic Blue Marble wallpaper
-Map folding
-Wildfire data
-Generating elevation profiles from Google Maps
-Harvard's Geospatial Library
-Topographic maps of North Korea
-The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online

posted by Iridic (13 comments total)

This is awesome. I'm only two links in and I've already found a Linux version of the earth wallpaper and am intending to try the one-sided, fully-accessible, partially-unfolded map.
posted by DU at 6:14 AM on July 23, 2010 [3 favorites]

Definitely forwarded to my geography/GIS geek friends.

Metafilter has turned me into the grandmother of yours who keeps insistently mailing you newspaper clippings of things only nominally related to your interests. I am aware of the potential salaries an education at the DeVry Institute can provide me with, grandma.
posted by griphus at 6:29 AM on July 23, 2010

Totally all over the GeoGratis and toronto.ca | Open data.
posted by scruss at 6:31 AM on July 23, 2010

Mmmmmmmm maps!

griphus, I did not get your email. /disappointed grandchild
posted by desjardins at 7:20 AM on July 23, 2010

Oh, I just ... er ... assumed you'd see it here. Yeah. That's the ticket.
posted by griphus at 7:27 AM on July 23, 2010

The Google Maps Elevation Profiling came in very handy a few weeks ago for picking a route from Taos, NM to Amarillo, TX - considering we were towing a 30' travel trailer and the GPS wanted to send us across the Sangre de Cristo mountains!
posted by ElGuapo at 9:14 AM on July 23, 2010

nb, I didn't use the linked site - I did it by exporting the Google Maps driving directions (from My Maps) and opening in Google Earth, and viewing the elevation profile there.
posted by ElGuapo at 9:19 AM on July 23, 2010

Yay! Thanks! I love my new Dynamic Earth wallpaper!
posted by Duffington at 10:37 AM on July 23, 2010

I remember my road-to-Damascus moment around 10 years ago when it hit me how huge GIS was going to be. I was reading a pdf newsletter from the State's GIS office. In a flash Google maps, foursquare, gov 2.0, & augmented reality all seemed inevitible. I wish I'd gone all-in for a chance to be involved. Unfortunately I didn't see the iPhone coming. That might have made the difference. There's more work to be done, but I don't expect to play a part.
posted by putzface_dickman at 10:52 AM on July 23, 2010

Right there with you putzface. I started playing around with ESRI's GIS tools back in '95, and every year was going to be the year GIS went mainstream. The funny thing is, while I thought geo-everything would be huge and awesome (think of the "Earth" program from "Snow Crash"), I completely misread the future. I thought by now, everyone would be running around wearing computers that were wired up to their HUD glasses and location dection finger rings accessing government created digital maps. Instead, glorified two-way radios (cellphones) became the new awesomness for geo-awareness along with private sector online geodata. I'm still thinking augmented reality is going to be way more important than anyone thinks.
posted by SeanOfTheHillPeople at 1:55 PM on July 23, 2010

I'm teaching myself arcGIS now and have fallen in love with how much you can do with it (I used ESRI in a class taught by a remote sensing expert and it scared me. Now I'm figuring out mixed species associations of monkeys with arcGIS and, while still a little scary, I'm making it work)! I am very excited to futz around with these links.
posted by ChuraChura at 5:14 PM on July 23, 2010

Just did the map folding. It's great! If I had any maps I needed to embed in sketchbooks, I'd totally use this method.
posted by DU at 7:23 AM on July 26, 2010

ChuraChura - never fear. Remote sensing folks are weird.
posted by desjardins at 3:58 PM on July 26, 2010