Data Resources

Websites listed below contain natural / physical science data. 

This list is not meant to be exhaustive; it lists the more commonly used and useful sites. 

 

• Agriculture
• Atmosphere
• Climate
• Data Archive
• Environment
• Water

 

Agriculture

• Foreign Agricultural Service - United States international trade data on Agricultural, Fish, Forest and Textile Products.

• Economic Research Service - U.S. Department of Agriculture focuses on the economic aspects of food, farming, natural resources and rural America.

• National Agricultural Statistics Service - Data covering virtually every facet of U.S. agriculture -- production and supplies of food and fiber, prices paid and received by farmers, farm labor and wages, farm aspects of the industry.

• National Forest Inventory and Analysis Data Base - A collection of databases and data retrieval systems from the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program.

• Production, Supply and Distribution Online - This database contains current and historical official USDA data on production, supply and distribution of agricultural commodities for the United States and key producing and consuming countries.

 

Atmosphere

• Australian Bureau of Meteorology - The Australian climate computer archive holds data from around 18,000 sites, both open and closed, including about 7,000 rainfall sites which are 'open' and reporting and about 2,000 open sites reporting other climate data, such as temperature, wind, evaporation and more.

• NCEI Climate Data - NCEI is the world’s largest provider of weather and climate data. Land-based, marine, model, radar, weather balloon, satellite, and paleoclimatic are just a few of the types of datasets available.

 

Climate

• NCEI Climate Data - NCEI is the world’s largest provider of weather and climate data. Land-based, marine, model, radar, weather balloon, satellite, and paleoclimatic are just a few of the types of datasets available.

 

Data Archive

• NASA's EOS - Distributes thousands of Earth system science data products and associated services for interdisciplinary studies.

• British Geological Survey - BGS is a data-rich organisation with over 400 datasets in its care; including environmental monitoring data, digital databases, physical collections (borehole core, rocks, minerals and fossils), records and archives.

• NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) - Search for data by topic: agriculture, climate, oceans, sun/earth, atmosphere, cryosphere, paleoclimate, terrestrial hydrosphere, biosphere, human dimensions, solid earth, biological classifications, land surface, spectral engineering.

• Federation of Earth Science Information Partners - Over 3,500 Earth Science datasets. The vast majority of the data is free.

 

Environment

• FIND - the Australian Government’s spatial data catalogue and in conjunction with data.gov.au provides access to a network of open government data. 

• Centre for Ecology and Hydrology - Large array of nationally and internationally important hydrological, terrestrial and freshwater environmental data.

• EPA Data Finder - Search for data  from the Environmental Protection Agency.

• Natural Resources Inventory - Statistical survey of land use and natural resource conditions and trends on U.S. non-Federal lands.

 

Water

• Global Hydrology Resource Center (GHRC) - Provides both historical and current Earth science data, information, and products from satellite, airborne, and surface-based instruments.

• Global Runoff Data Centre - Global river discharge data for the sake of key research linking local and global change issues.

• Hydrological Services Program Water Resources - Australian water data.

• National Snow and Ice Data Center - NSIDC offers hundreds of scientific data sets for research, focusing on the cryosphere and its interactions. Data are from satellites and field observations. All data are free of charge.

• National Water Information System - USGS.

• Ocean Data Viewer - The purpose of this Ocean Data Viewer is to provide an overview and access to a range of data, and relevant conventions, which are available to help inform decisions that are important for the conservation of marine and coastal biodiversity.

Image source: Breiðamerkurjökull, part of Vatnajökull near Jökulsárlón, Iceland. Andreas Tille.  GNU Free.  Wikimedia Commons.