Gothos

External links to gazetteers, reference tables, look-up services, maps, and software.

Gazetteers

• Census Bureau Gazetteers – Complete lists of all place names used in the 2000 and 1990 US Census
• Geographic Names Information System – USGS gazetteer service that contains all place names used on US topographic maps
• GEOnet Names Server – NGA gazetteer service with standard spellings of all foreign place names. In addition to the look-up service, you can also download tab-delimited files that have x and y coordinates for all features in that country

Reference – Projections and Coordinate Systems

• Spatial Reference – Look up EPSG and ESRI codes for coordinate systems and map projections and download coordinate system data in WKT, Proj, and other formats
• State Plane Coordinate System – Clickable map that shows the various state plane divisions by state
• UTM Coordinate System – Map and explanation of the Universal Transverse Mercator zones
• Projection Reference – Radical Cartography’s map projection reference page, with summary information and depictions of common global and continental projections
• Map Coordinates Finder – Look up latitude and longitude coordinates for addresses, cities, states, and zip codes

Tools – Projections and Coordinate Systems

• USC Geocoding Services – a free set of geocoding and coordinate tools and services from the Univ of Southern California’s GIS Research Laboratory. Includes individual look-up for address coordinates and a web api interface and software for batch geocoding
• GEOTRANS – tool for individual or batch conversion of coordinates from one system to another

Reference – IDs and Geographies

• FIPS County Lookup – a Census Bureau site that lets you look up state and county FIPS codes
• Cure for The Common Code – sponsored by the Missouri State Data Center, this exhaustive site provides lists of codes used by federal and state agencies to identify places throughout the US
• ISO Country Codes – information and a downloadable list of country codes commonly used to uniquely identify the world’s nations
• ISO Region Codes – lookup for regional names (1st level divisions) for all countries.
• Statoids – comprehensive guide to 1st and 2nd level administrative divisions (states, provinces, counties, regions, districts, etc) for all countries of the world.
• Changes to Counties – a Census Bureau site that provides details on changes to county boundaries between 1970 and 2000
• Census Bureau Maps – digital reference maps in pdf format for a variety of administrative areas

Tools – Cartographic Design

• ColorBrewer – great tool for choosing color schemes for thematic maps. Provides color values in several color code formats and makes suggestions for appropriate color schemes based on medium (paper – color and b/w, computer screens, projectors).

GIS Software and Extensions – ArcGIS

• ESRI Patches and Service Packs – updates and bug fixes for ArcGIS software
• Hawth’s Tools – an extension for ArcGIS that has many great tools for geospatial analysis and editing
• NPS Metadata Editor – a GIS metadata editing tool created by the National Park Service for ArcGIS

GIS Software and Extensions – Open Source

• QGIS – a free, open source, user friendly, cross-platform GIS. For Windows users, you can download QGIS, GRASS, and the GDAL / OGR utilities in one package
• fTools – a versatile toolbox extension for QGIS that adds a lot of key features
• GDAL / OGR – free, open source, cross-platform, command line utilities for projection transformations, file format conversions, and metadata and attribute queries
• GRASS – a free, open source, powerful, cross-platform GIS
• SpatiaLite – free, open source, desktop geodatabase platform built on SQLite
• SQLite Manager – Firefox add-on that lets you create, view, and edit SQLite databases
• An Overview of Free & Open Source Desktop GIS – comprehensive overview of the various FOSS GIS packages