Geospatial Data

Geospatial data explorer

The GIS Lab maintains the Iowa State University Geospatial Data Explorer. This website provides several methods for data searches. The Geospatial Data Explorer houses metadata documents for geospatial data housed on the ISU FTP Server, references to other potential sources of data on campus, and selected references to popular data clearinghouses.

Do you have data you would like to share? As a service to students and researchers on campus the GIS Lab has the ability to store your geospatial data upon completion of a project. We can help you develop metadata for your data and make it searchable through the Geospatial Data Explorer

FTP Server

The GIS Lab FTP server provides access to a variety of geospatial data. For campus users we have many of the commonly used datasets developed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Iowa Department of Transportation as well as data developed by research on campus. Feel free to browse the site directly of use the Geospatial Data Explorer to get descriptions of available data.

Use an FTP client like Filezilla or a webbrowser

ftp.gis.iastate.edu

anonymous for the user

your email address for the password

Iowa Geographic Image Map Server

The Iowa Geographic Image Map Server (aka The Ortho Server) provides a wide variety of image products via download or through web map services (WMS). Data coverage includes the entire state of Iowa. Products include

1990 black and white photos

2002 color infrared photos

2004 natural color photos

1:24000 and 1:100000 topographic maps (USGS DRGs)

1992 and 2002 land cover/ land use maps