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Links to Geography Resources for Africa
- Africa Data Dissemination
Service (ADDS)
- "The United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Famine Early
Warning System (FEWS)
is a multi-disciplinary project that provides sub-national information to decision makers
about potential famine situations, allowing them to authorize timely initiatives to
prevent famine outbreaks.
- ARCNews
- While this commercial newsletter isn't specifically directed at Africa, it frequently contains short articles about how GIS
data and related
systems are being used innovatively in this context. A related site is GIS.com
- Environment Information Systems in
Sub Saharan Africa: Gateway to Environmental Information Resources
- The UNEP and World Bank's EIS/SSA Program aims at developing African capacity for the
management of environmental information as an integral component of the sustainable
development process. The site includes a link to the EIS News newsletter.
Their publications
are also available, with several now in full text on the Web.
"The term 'environment information system' (EIS) is used in the context of this
Program to cover any organized system for environmental data management, including
geographic information systems (GIS) containing environmental data sets."
"The objective of the Program is to promote the implementation of effective
environmental information systems (EIS) to support the process of sustainable development
in sub-Saharan Africa. The Program supports African countries as they assess their
priority needs in terms of environment and land information systems, and analyze the
technical, institutional, legal and economic issues hampering their possibilities of
meeting these needs. It assists them in finding adequate, sustainable and long-term
solutions to deal with these issues."
- European Space Agency's Earthnet Online
- Their Earth Observation Guide and Directory provides much GIS and remote sensing
information. A registration system is in place, but allows anonymous use of most of their
site.
- GEOnet Names Server
- The "National Imagery and Mapping Agency's GEOnet
Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA)
database of foreign geographic feature names. Approximately 20,000 of the databases 3.5
million features are updated monthly with names information approved by the U.S. Board on
Geographic Names (US BGN).
Geographic names of a particular country are current to the date displayed after the
country name in the Database Query Form. This date represents the publication date of the
most recent NIMA gazetteer of that country or the date after which at least 10% of the
data for that country had been modified or major additions were made. The information in
this database is based in part on copyrighted source material. Copyright restrictions
continue to exist."
- GIS.com
- This "portal to GIS information on the Web and was
created by ESRI, a GIS software
developer. The site is intended to educate anyone interested in
geographic technology on the value that technology brings to their day-to-day
activities. The site also provides GIS users with resources to help them in
their work."
- History of Cartography Volume 2, Book 3: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies.
Edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis.
- Full text of the introduction is
available for this excellent resource, perhaps the best available on
indigenous African cartographic traditions.
- National Geographic Society
- The National Geographic Society, likewise, has a very broad set of resources available,
including the "Map
Machine" and a searchable
index to NGS publications. Also includes many links to related sites on cartography,
geographic names databases, government agencies, and map libraries.
- Institut de
recherche pour le Développement (formerly, ORSTOM)
- IRD, a French government agency, conducts a variety of development and basic research
projects in tropical environments throughout the world (see their African
page). In
French.
See also the "Laboratoire
de cartographie appliquée."
- Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin
- Among many other resources, PCL ("A feature of UT Library Online") provides a
comprehensive set of the CIA's African maps in
one place.
- Spatial Transformation in
the post-Apartheid era
- "A website course in social economic and political geography."
- University of Pennsylvania's Center for African Studies provides a set of Country-Specific
pages
- These provide maps of each African country, along with a wealth of other information on
each country.
- US Geological Survey
- USGS's National Mapping Information page includes
numerous resources, including the Global Land Information System, Geographic Names
Information, digital data, images, aerial photographs, and links to map dealers and
related sites.
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The U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resource Observation System (EROS) Data Center
provides support to the FEWS Project in the following areas of expertise: Data archiving,
Data entry and processing, Data management software, GIS technologies."
Joe Aufmuth is GIS Coordinator for the UF Smathers Libraries and the
primary point of contact for GIS/Remote Sensing
assistance in the libraries. He works
in the Government Documents Dept.,
and can be contacted at mapper@mail.ufllib.ufl.edu or (352) 392-0366.
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