GIS Datasets for the State of Illinois and the United States

The GIS Lab is committed to provide GIS data for the state of Illinois and the U.S. to both the UIS community and off-campus users.

A wealth of public domain data is available for scientists and researchers at no cost. Although many public datasets can be obtained through websites and/or public repository libraries, most users still face major obstacles in gathering and using these datasets.

The GIS Lab systematically inventories these datasets that are publicly available for the State of Illinois. Following the links and data description below, you can easily locate the data you are looking for. Our lab staff is also available to answer any further questions that you may have when retrieving your dataset. Our lab staff can be contacted via email at gis@uis.edu, or phone, (217) 206-8403. Clicking on a link will navigate you away from the UIS website, to return, use the back arrow. Additionally, please adhere to all stated citation requests found on the various sites.

National Datasets

Data.gov Comprehensive Geodata Search: Provides download links to all available U.S. Federal Agency datasets. Categories include Biology and Ecology, administrative and political boundaries, atmospheric and climatic, business and economic, elevation and derived products, environment and conservation, agriculture and farming, geological and geophysical, imagery and basemaps, inland water resources, military, locations and geodetic networks, oceans and estuaries, cadastral, cultural, society, and demographics, facilities and structures, transportation networks, and utilities and communication.

US Census Bureau Data: Provides access to publicly available printed maps and free, downloadable maps in Portable Document Format [PDF], to generalized, digital files suitable for use with a Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) as a base for medium to small-scale thematic mapping, and to two mapping applications derived from Census Bureau base map data – American FactFinder, State&County QuickFacts, and the TIGER Map Server. Also available are queriable census data.

USGS Earth Explorers:  Provides access to Landsat and other remote sensing satellite data. Requires users to create an account.

Illinois Datasets

Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse: Data provided through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Prairie Research Institute. Includes climate, elevation, geology, hydrology, imagery, infrastructure, landcover, and reference datasets for Illinois.

City of Chicago GIS: Data provided by the City of Chicago to include base data, boundary, conservation areas, empowerment zones, enterprise communities, enterprise zones, industrial corridors, planning districts, planning regions, cemetery, forests, libraries, parks, pedways, school grounds, and transportation. Also included are a variety of maps for the City of Chicago.

Chicago Police Department Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEARMAP): The CLEARMAP Crime Summary web application enables you to see choropleth maps and tables of reported crime summarized into 32 categories such as violent crime, property crime, robbery, burgulary and motor vehicle theft. The data is summarized by beat, district, ward, community area, and census tract. The database contains 1 year of information which you can access in blocks of 90, 180, 270 and 365 days. Data is refreshed daily. This tool is useful for comparing and contrasting various areas of the City of Chicago.

Illinois Rivers Decision Support System: Data provided by the Illinois State Water Survey to include online data, maps, downloadable GIS data, GIS animations/visualizations, and web mapping applications.

Natural Connections: Green Infrastructure in Wisconsin, Illinois, & Indiana: Data provided through a partnership between the Center for Neighborhood Technology and Openlands and includes downloadable GIS data from over 400 green infrastructure datasets.

Illinois County GIS Links: This site provides a list of counties and links to each county’s GIS website (if available). It is possible they have not updated all county links; searching for a county GIS website would produce also be beneficial.

Illinois Natural History Survey Data Resources: Data provided through the University of Illinois’ Illinois Natural History Survey. Includes links to ecological and biological monitor dating, plant and animal specimen collection datasets, ecology software server, and other GIS resources. Some datasets also include records from additional states.

Illinois Sate Geological Survey GIS Data: Data provided through the University of Illinois’ Illinois Sate Geological Survey. Includes data on IL coal mines (ILMINES), gamma-ray logs, and IL historical aerial photography (ILHAP), IL oil and gas (ILOIL), IL water wells (ILWATER), ISGS seismometer, and public land survey system (PLSS).

Illinois State Water Survey Data Resources: Data provided through the University of Illinois’ Illinois State Water Survey. Provides links to weather, agricultural, streamflow, drought, groundwater, wells, atmosphere, and precipitation chemistry datasets.

Illinois Technology Transfer Center GIS: Data provided by Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). Provides roadway information of Illinois by county, and includes links to Illinois Highway System File metadata, and Illinois Geospatial data clearinghouse.

Natural Resources Datasets

National Geologic Map Database: Provides access to publications, maps and reports including free digital data downloads queriable by geological theme, format, state, county, author, title, scale, or 100K quad.

Natural Resource Conservation Service: Provides access to digital data downloads of 8-digit hydrologic unit coverage, county and FIPS coverage, major land resource areas coverage, and state 8-digit hydrologic unit coverage for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories.

Forest Service Geodata Clearinghouse: Provides access to an online collection of digital data related to forest resources. Through the Clearinghouse, you can find datasets related to forests & grasslands, including boundaries and ownership, natural resources, roads and trails, as well as datasets related to State and private forested areas, including insect and disease threat and surface water importance. Includes additional downloadable map products, raster data, and links to other sources of forest resource information.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: Data provided by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service. Datasets include refuge boundaries, public roads and related features that are located on National Wildlife Refuges and Wetland Information. Also included are links to USGS DEM 10M and 30M, USGS DOQ, DRG, and DLG, Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse, STATSGO, and SSURGO.

U.S. General Soil Map (STATSGO2): Provides access to free digital data downloads of the state soil geographic database.

Geospatial Data Gateway: Provides access to digital data downloads to natural resource data for state, county or counties. Data includes soils, plant hardiness, climate, wetlands, transportation, flood hazards, cadastral, hydrography, elevation, boundaries, federal lands, cultural and demographics, enhanced digital raster graphic, common land unit, land use resource areas, orthoimagery, land cover, watersheds and dams.

Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium:  Provides access to digital data downloads for 21 classes of land cover, percent tree canopy, and percent urban imperviousness at 30m cell resolution.

Mineral Resources On-Line Spatial Data: Provides access to regional and global Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Mineral Resource maps and data.

Coastal and Marine Geology Program Internet Map Server: Provides access to published data layers and information from the US Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program. Data includes Pacific West Coast, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic East Coast.

National Hydrography Dataset: Provides seamless digital data that can be queried and downloaded. Data can be extracted by sub basin, county, congressional district or by topographic map quad. Data can be extracted in blocks encompassing several adjacent reference areas.

The National Assessment of Shoreline Change: A GIS Compilation of Vector Shorelines and Associated Shoreline Change Data for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico: Layers include Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, Vector Shoreline, Offshore baseline, Shore-normal transects with long-term  and short-term rates of change, Transect/Shoreline intersection positions, Alongshore Vector showing spatial extents of beach nourishments, internal state boundaries, and cities and towns of the US.

National Geophysical Data Center: Layers include Coastal Relief Models for central, western, and eastern Gulf of Mexico, Continental US, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, East Coast, Florida, Southern California, US Central Pacific Coast, US NW Pacific Coast, Bathymetric, Topographic data, DMSP OLS Daily Mosaics, DMSP OLS Gas Flare Monitoring, DMSP OLS Global Composites, DMSP OLS Lunar Cycle Composite, GLOBE Version 1.0 Digital Elevation Data, 1999, Nightime Lights of the World 2003, TerrainBase (Global 5-minute Digital Terrain Model), 1994.

Spatial Data Sets Available on the WRD NSDI Node: A variety of water-based datasets provided by the USGS.

NOAA Coastal Services Center Land Cover Analysis: Coastal Great Lakes Land Cover: Provides access to data layers of land cover and change data for the Great Lakes region (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) according to Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) standards. These data are the first coastal land cover information available region-wide for the Great Lakes since 1992.

USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center Data Library: Provides maps, tools, and databases for the Upper Midwest in the following categories: aquatic features, bathymetry, and navigation structure, data visualization tools, decision support systems, fisheries and macroinvertebrates, land cover/ land use data, long term resource monitoring program data, maps, quadrangles, lidar datasets, sediments, contaminants, nutrients, water quality, elevation, discharge, and many others.

National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Data Portal: Provides access to the National Ecology Observatory Network (NEON) open data resources. Topics include biological, physical, chemical, and ecological characteristics at field sites across North America. Additional data topics include atomosphere, organisms, populations, & communites, ecohydrology, biochemistry, and land cover & processes. Includes links to tutorials explaining how to use NEON datasets and tools such as R and Python.

Planning/Community Datasets

Natural Resources Conservation Service: Provides access to free digital data downloads of 8-digit hydrologic unit coverage, county and FIPS coverage, major land resource areas coverage, and state 8-digit hydrologic unit coverage for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and territories.

National Geologic Map Database: Provides access to publications, maps and reports including free digital data downloads queriable by geological theme, format, state, county, author, title, scale, or 100K quad.

Geospatial Data Gateway: Provides access to digital data downloads to natural resource data for state, county or counties. Data includes soils, plants, climate, wetlands, transportation, flood hazards, cadastral, hydrography, elevation, boundaries, federal lands, cultural and demographics, common land unit, orthoimagery, land cover, watersheds and dams.

Earthquake Hazards Program: Provides access to downloadable data and interactive mapping for seismic hazards and earthquake probability.

Mineral Resources On-Line Spatial Data: Provides access to regional and global Geology, Geochemistry, Geophysics, and Mineral Resource maps and data.

Coastal and Marine Geology Program Internet Map Server: Provides access to published data layers and information from the US Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program. Data includes Pacific West Coast, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic East Coast.

National Hydrography Dataset: Provides seamless digital data that can be queried and downloaded. Data can be extracted by sub basin, county, congressional district or by topographic map quad. Data can be extracted in blocks encompassing several adjacent reference areas.

U.S. Census Bureau: Provides access to publicly available printed maps and free, downloadable maps in Portable Document Format [PDF], to generalized, digital files suitable for use with a Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) as a base for medium to small-scale thematic mapping, and to two mapping applications derived from Census Bureau base map data – American FactFinder, State&County QuickFacts, and the TIGER Map Server. Also available is queriable census data.

The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data: Provides access to data collections that contain geographic identifiers that could be geocoded for GIS analysis. Includes FIPS county codes, county codes, census tract codes, zip codes, block groups, police precincts and beats, addresses, and lat/long coordinates.

National Geophysical Data Center: Layers include Coastal Relief Models for central, western, and eastern Gulf of Mexico, Continental US, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, East Coast, Florida, Southern California, US Central Pacific Coast, US NW Pacific Coast, Bathymetric, Topographic data, DMSP OLS Daily Mosaics, DMSP OLS Gas Flare Monitoring, DMSP OLS Global Composites, DMSP OLS Lunar Cycle Composite, GLOBE Version 1.0 Digital Elevation Data, 1999, Nightime Lights of the World 2003, TerrainBase (Global 5-minute Digital Terrain Model) 1994.

Spatial Data Sets Available on the WRD NSDI Node: A variety of water based data sets provided by the USGS.

Environmental Datasets

National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Data Portal: Provides access to the National Ecology Observatory Network (NEON) open data resources. Topics include biological, physical, chemical, and ecological characteristics at field sites across North America. Additional data topics include atomosphere, organisms, populations, & communites, ecohydrology, biochemistry, and land cover & processes. Includes links to tutorials explaining how to use NEON datasets and tools such as R and Python.

EPA Geospatial Data Download: Provides access to data about facilities or sites subject to environmental regulation. The EPA Geospatial Data Access Project provides a downloadable extensible markup language (XML) file, Shapefile and Feature Class of these facilities or sites. Includes data on Superfund National Priorities List, RCRAInfo – Treatment, Storage, and Disposal facilities, Toxic Release Inventory System, NEPT – National Environmental Performance Track, and Permit Compliance System (PCS) – National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Majors.

Envirofacts Data Warehouse: Provides access to downloadable data, queriable searches and interactive mapping for a variety of environmental topics. Topics include AIRS/AFS, Brownfields, CERCLIS, Environmental and Compliance History Online/IDEA, Envirofacts Master Chemical Integrator, Facility Registry System, Grants Information and Control System, Information Collection Rule, NCOD, Water Discharge Permits (PCS), Radiation Information Database (RADInfo), RadNet, Safe Drinking Water Information System, Toxic Release Inventory and UV index.

Better Assessment Science Integrating Point & Nonpoint Sources:  BASINS is a multi-purpose environmental analysis system that integrates a geographical information system (GIS), national watershed data, and state-of-the-art environmental assessment and modeling tools into one convenient package. Includes downloadable data in a full processing package using open source GIS software.

National Weather Service/NOAA: The NWS partnered with NOAA to offer this site which provides GIS data downloads in KML or Shapefile format. Some possible downloadable layers include current weather and warnings, weather hazard assessments, forecasts, flood forecasts, precipitation, hurricane data, fire weather, and records of past weather.

Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System Shapefile Clearinghouse: Offers boundary layers for counties, public zones, coastal and offshore marine zones, fire zones, hydrologic zones, cities and urban areas, as well as digital terrain data. This is the data used by the NWS and NOAA for their maps.

Geospatial Data Gateway: Provides access to digital data downloads to natural resource data for state, county or counties. Data includes soils, plants, climate, wetlands, transportation, flood hazards, cadastral, hydrography, elevation, boundaries, federal lands, cultural and demographics, common land unit, orthoimagery, land cover, watersheds and dams.

U.S. General Soil Map (STATSGO2): Provides access to free digital data downloads of the state soil geographic database.

Coastal and Marine Geology Program Internet Map Server: Provides access to published data layers and information from the US Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program. Data includes Pacific West Coast, Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic East Coast.

National Hydrography Dataset: Provides seamless digital data that can be queried and downloaded. Data can be extracted by sub basin, county, congressional district or by topographic map quad. Data can be extracted in blocks encompassing several adjacent reference areas.

TOXMAP Environmental Health e-Maps: Provides access to downloads of facilities data and aggregate release amounts (nationwide, all TRI years), download releases data (nationwide, all TRI chemicals), download ESRI shapefile of TRI facilities, download Superfund NPL site data (nationwide), download Superfund NPL contaminant data (nationwide), download ESRI shapefile of Superfund NPL sites.

Spatial Data Sets Available on the WRD NSDI Node: A variety of water based data sets provided by the USGS.

Coastal Change Analysis Program Regional Land Cover: The Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) produces a nationally standardized database of land cover and land change information for the coastal regions of the U.S. C-CAP products provide inventories of coastal intertidal areas, wetlands, and adjacent uplands with the goal of monitoring these habitats by updating the land cover maps every five years.

USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center Data Library: Provides maps, tools, and databases for the Upper Midwest in the following categories: aquatic features, bathymetry, and navigation structure, data visualization tools, decision support systems, fisheries and macroinvertebrates, land cover/ land use data, long term resource monitoring program data, maps, quadrangles, lidar datasets, sediments, contaminants, nutrients, water quality, elevation, discharge, and many others.

Socioeconomic Datasets

U.S. Census Bureau: Provides access to publicly available printed maps and free, downloadable maps in Portable Document Format [PDF], to generalized, digital files suitable for use with a Geographic Information System (G.I.S.) as a base for medium to small-scale thematic mapping, and to two mapping applications derived from Census Bureau base map data – American FactFinder, State&County QuickFacts, and the TIGER Map Server. Also available is queriable census data.

The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS): Provides, free of charge, aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for the United States between 1790 and 2013.

The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data: Provides access to data collections that contain geographic identifiers that could be geocoded for GIS analysis. Includes FIPS county codes, county codes, census tract codes, zip codes, block groups, police precincts and beats, addresses, and lat/long coordinates.

Disclaimer

The University of Illinois at Springfield does not warrant or make any representations as to the quality, content, accuracy, or completeness of the information, text graphics, links and other items contained on this page. Such materials have been compiled from a variety of sources, and are subject to change without notice. Please report any broken links to the webmaster at gis@uis.edu.