Online Spatial Data Sources - FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RESOURCES

THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: (http://www.usgs.gov/). Home of the National Mapping Division, host for the Federal Geographic Data Committee (http://fgdc.er.usgs.gov/), the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and headquarters for the data archive at the EROS Data Center (http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/).
THE UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU,  Department of Commerce: Home of the TIGER data for computer mapping.  (http://www.census.gov/)
TERRASERVER: An amalgam of government and private-sector companies, this site is part of the Microsoft network, in collaboration with the USGS, Compaq, Storage Works and Spin-2.  The site allows users to download aerial photos and satellite images, searchable by name or location in a variety of scales.  Claiming to be the largest online database, it contains over 3 TeraBytes of digital information. Very cool!  (http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/)
NATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL DATA CENTER: Location for all sorts of geologial and earth resources information and data. (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/ngdc.html)
NATIONAL OCEAN SERVICE: Center of information for mapping and charting of ports and oceans etc. (http://www.nos.noaa.gov/)
NATIONAL IMAGERY AND MAPPING AGENCY. The Agency's site provides ready access to the world's imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial information.  (http://164.214.2.59/)
DEFENSE MAPPING AGENCY TERRAIN MAPPING PROJECT OFFICE: Data collections and information on terrain mapping. (http://164.214.2.53:8001/)
NASA: Source of much existing data, and includes details of planned future systems. Many links
to follow, including a master data base to facilitate searching. (http://www.nasa.gov/)

Download Google Earth KML and KMZ to SHP converter

Need of transferring Google Earth Data to a GIS? Kml2shp transforms KML 
files into ESRI Shapefiles.

The KML file could contain Points, Paths and Polygons. When creating SHP 
files the information is separated into thematic layers.

For each shapefile (shp), an attributes table (dbf) and index file (shx) are 
created.

The kml to shp conversion consists of three steps:

1) Open KML file
2) Choose Shape Type
3) Select output Shapefile name

Optionally, you can change from WGS84 to a local datum and from Lat/Lon to 
UTM.

Also, Kml2shp can export to AutoCAD (DXF) and GPS (GPX)


Download a very useful and simple software to convert your KML or KMZ file (From Google Earth) to Esri   Shapefile (SHP)

Download here



Convert Google Earth data to a Shapefile

Tested with:
Firefox 3.5 (Windows, Linux and MAC OS)
Safari 4 (Windows, MAC OS),
Google Chrome (Windows, MAC OS)

SHP Files created by this tool work properly with ArcGIS

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Tracking Hurricane Sandy in Google Earth

With Hurricane Sandy hitting the Bahamas and heading toward the United States, Google has set up their Crisis Response Map to try to help with the situation. The map includes various tools such as public alerts, emergency shelters and (as pointed out by Google Maps Mania and shown below) wind speed probability charts.

If you're in Google Earth, there are some great tools available to you in there as well. By opening the [Weather] layer, you can turn on near-real-time [Clouds] and [Radar] layers, which show the storm gaining strength:

If you turn on the main [Places] layer in Google Earth, a small hurricane icon will appear in the center of the storm. By clicking the icon you can view news, advisories, as well as three and five day path predictions.

If you come across any other tools that help with the tracking of this storm, leave a comment below and let us know.