Selected GIS datasets for the Southwestern Region are available for download from this page.
Use of most of these files requires GIS software such as ArcGIS, ArcView, ArcInfo or ArcExplorer. Most of these datasets are provided in ArcView shapefile (shp) format. ArcExplorer, a free, basic GIS software package available from ESRI will read the data in shapefile format (ESRI and the ESRI Logo are licensed trademarks of Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.). Some datasets will also have related tables that can be used with the geographic data. Tabular data will be in Microsoft Excel format. All files have been compressed with zip and can be uncompressed with programs such as WinZip. Be aware that some of the files are over 3 megabytes.
Some datasets are also available as KMZ (Google Earth) files. KMZ is a compressed version of KML (Keyhole Markup Language.) This is a format used by Google Earth to display geographic data. Google Earth is free and can be downloaded from Google. Google Earth is a trade mark of Google Corporation.
Additional descriptive information about the datasets is available through the Metadata link. These files meet the FGDC (Federal Geospatial Data Committee) standards for structure and content.