Slashgeo

adamhill writes "On the heels of NASA releasing Next Generation Blue Marble, the World Wind community has released an add-on that provides a preview for its users. All 12 months are provided to choose from, along with a new bathymetry layer from imagery provided by NOAA. Score one for the open source and open data communities." This is also discussed on slashdot.

FrankW writes "The Next Generation Blue Marble datasets from NASA have been converted to ECW format, and made available as torrents at http://www.geotorrent.org/.

Each torrent includes 12 distinct world images, one for each month of the year, each 86400 x 43200 pixels in size. At 50:1 compression these ecw files are about 260MB or 2.8GB per torrent.

Three versions exist:

• Enhanced with Topolography and Bathymetry: http://geotorrent.org/details.php?id=61
• Enhanced with Topography: http://geotorrent.org/details.php?id=60
• Unaltered: http://geotorrent.org/details.php?id=59

A variety of software package support the ECW format, including the FWTools builds of OpenEV/MapServer/GDAL."

An anonymous voxel writes "The full Landsat 7 mosaic dataset behind the WMS server at http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov/ is now available for download. Follow the download link on the main OnEarth page. 1.3TB total, split in single band GeoTIFF files. The distribution includes the 30m visual, 30m infrared and the 15m panchromatic bands."

The S,M,GIS blog tells us the U.S. National Land Cover Database 2001 (NLCD 2001) is now available. From the blog: "The U.S. Geological Survey, on behalf of the interagency Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC), is pleased to announce the availability of NLCD 2001 products for the conterminous United States. [...] NLCD 2001 products include 21 classes of land cover, percent tree canopy and percent urban imperviousness at 30 m resolution derived from Landsat imagery."

A colleague sent me the link to the active Global Mapping Project. From their summary: "What is a Global Map? Digital geographic information in 1 km resolution covering the earth's surface with standardized specifications and available to everyone at marginal cost. How Many Layers are there in a Global Map? Global Map data have 8 layers: Boundaries, Drainage, Transportation, Population Centers, Elevation, Land Cover, Land Use, and Vegetation." What's impressive is the quantity of countries which participates, in short: most countries!

All Points Blog links to ESA's GlobCover project which released a global land use land cover classification at 300m. From the site: "The GlobCover project has developed a service capable of delivering global composite and land cover maps using as input observations from the 300m MERIS sensor on board the ENVISAT satellite mission. The GlobCover service has been demonstrated over a period of 18 months [Januray 2005 - June 2006], for which a set of MERIS Full Resolution (FR) composites (bi-monthly and annual) and a Global Land Cover map have been produced. The GlobCover composites are the results of a set of processing made on the MERIS FR images such as cloud detection, atmospheric correction, geolocalisation and re-mapping. The GlobCover Land Cover map is compatible with the UN Land Cover Classification System (LCCS)." Yes, it's free. See also related stories below.

The short issue #10 of the Global Land Cover Network bulletin is now available. This "global alliance for standard multi-purpose land cover data production" focuses on United Nations activities and projects. From the 6-pages documents: "As anticipated in the last edition, this issue hosts a detailed report of the activities of the Northern Eurasian Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI)." See global land cover related stories below.

Deb Ranjan Sinha writes that the "250m True Marble global dataset is available for free download from http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_ marble/download" Unearthed Outdoors offer the True Marble raster dataset of the entire globe in 8 tiles under the Creative Commons license. Available resolutions range from 32km to 250m. Update: 01/07 14:04 GMT by S : This dataset was mentioned in February 2008. I don't think the offer changed since then.