TechnicalGIS

Environmental and protected area data by country

Theme
Environment
Countries
131
National sources
228
Global datasets
24
Last verified

Environment agencies and protected-area registers, plus Protected Planet (WDPA), Key Biodiversity Areas, GBIF and Global Forest Watch. This page lists all 228 national environmental sources in the catalogue, country by country, after the 24 global datasets.

Global environment datasets

  • EEA Datahub (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Environment Agency · Europe

    European environmental datasets: Natura 2000, water bodies (WISE), noise, air quality, emissions and the EEA reference grid.

    • Environment
    • Land cover
    • Hydrology
    • Open data portal
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (EEA reuse policy; most datasets)
    Formats
    GeoPackage, Shapefile, GeoTIFF, WMS
    Link
    eea.europa.eu

    Verified

  • GBIF occurrence API (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free with registration

    Global Biodiversity Information Facility · Global

    More than 3 billion species occurrence records with coordinates; large downloads via the API need a free GBIF account.

    • Environment
    Licence
    Per record (CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC)
    Formats
    CSV, JSON, Darwin Core Archive, API
    Link
    techdocs.gbif.org

    Verified

  • Key Biodiversity Areas (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    KBA Partnership / BirdLife International · Global

    Boundaries of 16,000+ sites of global importance for biodiversity; request form, usually 5–10 working days.

    • Environment
    Licence
    Free for non-commercial use on request; commercial via IBAT
    Formats
    Shapefile
    Link
    keybiodiversityareas.org

    Verified

  • OpenAQ (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free with registration

    OpenAQ · Global

    Air-quality measurements (PM2.5, PM10, NO₂, O₃) from government and research monitors in 100+ countries; free API key.

    • Environment
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Per source (platform data CC BY 4.0)
    Formats
    CSV, JSON, API
    Link
    openaq.org

    Verified

  • Protected Planet (WDPA) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    UNEP-WCMC / IUCN · Global

    World Database on Protected Areas and OECMs, updated monthly, with polygons, IUCN categories and designation dates.

    • Environment
    • Boundaries & admin
    Licence
    Free for non-commercial use (WDPA terms); commercial via IBAT
    Formats
    Shapefile, File geodatabase, CSV, API
    Link
    protectedplanet.net

    Verified

  • Allen Coral Atlas (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Arizona State University · Tropical reefs

    Global shallow coral-reef geomorphic zones and benthic habitat maps at 5 m from Planet imagery, plus bleaching monitoring.

    • Marine & coastal
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoJSON, GeoTIFF, Shapefile
    Link
    allencoralatlas.org

    Verified

  • AlphaEarth Foundations Satellite Embeddings (annual, COG mirror) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Google and Google DeepMind (mirror by Taylor Geospatial on Source Cooperative) · Global

    64-dimensional annual embeddings at 10 m from the AlphaEarth Foundations geospatial foundation model, 2017 to 2025, as int8 COGs by UTM zone; no login needed. Use the provided VRTs, because the COGs are stored bottom-up. Attribution: The AlphaEarth Foundations Satellite Embedding dataset is produced by Google and Google DeepMind.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    COG, VRT
    Link
    source.coop

    Verified

  • Copernicus Atmosphere Data Store (CAMS) (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free with registration

    ECMWF / Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service · Global

    Air quality, aerosol and greenhouse-gas reanalyses and forecasts, globally at about 40–80 km and for Europe at 10 km; free account.

    • Climate & weather
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (most datasets; see each)
    Formats
    NetCDF, GRIB
    Link
    ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Commission (DG MARE) · European seas

    European seas bathymetry (about 115 m DTM), seabed habitats, geology, human activities and chemistry from one portal.

    • Marine & coastal
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Environment
    Licence
    Free and open (EMODnet; mostly CC BY 4.0)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, NetCDF, Shapefile, WMS, WFS
    Link
    emodnet.ec.europa.eu

    Verified

  • LUCAS Land Use and Coverage Area frame Survey (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    European Commission (Eurostat) · Europe

    Field survey of land cover and land use at hundreds of thousands of geolocated points across the EU every three years since 2006, with landscape photos and topsoil samples; widely used as reference data to train and validate land cover maps.

    • Land cover
    • Agriculture & soils
    • Environment
    Licence
    Eurostat reuse policy (free, attribution)
    Formats
    CSV
    Link
    ec.europa.eu

    Verified

  • Global Mangrove Watch (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Global Mangrove Alliance / Aberystwyth University / JAXA · Tropical and subtropical coasts

    Mangrove extent and change maps 1996–2020 at 25 m from L-band SAR and Landsat, with country statistics.

    • Marine & coastal
    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, Shapefile
    Link
    globalmangrovewatch.org

    Verified

  • Hansen Global Forest Change (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    University of Maryland GLAD / Google · Global

    Annual 30 m tree-cover loss from Landsat since 2001 plus 2000 tree cover, in 10° tiles (version 1.12, to 2024).

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    storage.googleapis.com

    Verified

  • NASA FIRMS active fires (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    NASA LANCE · Global

    Near-real-time MODIS (1 km) and VIIRS (375 m) fire detections within 3 hours of overpass, with archive downloads; free map key for the API.

    • Natural hazards
    • Environment
    Licence
    Public domain (NASA open data policy)
    Formats
    CSV, Shapefile, KML, API
    Link
    firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov

    Verified

  • Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    UNESCO IOC · Global

    Over 100 million marine species occurrence records with an API and full exports; R package robis.

    • Marine & coastal
    • Environment
    Licence
    Per dataset (CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC)
    Formats
    CSV, Parquet, API
    Link
    obis.org

    Verified

  • VIIRS Nighttime Lights (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines · Global

    Monthly and annual night-time light composites at 15 arc-seconds (about 500 m) since 2012; free registration needed.

    • Population
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (most products)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    eogdata.mines.edu

    Verified

  • Copernicus Climate Data Store (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free with registration

    ECMWF (Copernicus) · Global

    ERA5 reanalysis, seasonal forecasts and CMIP6 projections with a Python API (cdsapi); free ECMWF account needed.

    • Climate & weather
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (most datasets; see each)
    Formats
    NetCDF, GRIB
    Link
    cds.climate.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free with registration

    European Environment Agency · Europe

    CORINE Land Cover (1990–2018), Urban Atlas, high-resolution layers, EU-DEM and global vegetation products; free login for some downloads.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    • Elevation / DEM
    Licence
    Copernicus open licence (free, full and open; attribution)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, GeoPackage
    Link
    land.copernicus.eu

    Verified

  • ETH Global Canopy Height 2020 (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    ETH Zurich (EcoVision Lab) · Global

    Global 10 m canopy top height for 2020 from Sentinel-2 and GEDI lidar with a deep learning ensemble (Lang et al., 2023), with per-pixel uncertainty; also in Google Earth Engine.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    COG, GeoTIFF
    Link
    langnico.github.io

    Verified

  • Global Forest Watch Open Data Portal (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    World Resources Institute · Global

    Downloads of tree-cover loss and gain, deforestation alerts, fires and land-use layers; the GFW map itself now lives at Global Nature Watch.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0 (most datasets; see each)
    Formats
    GeoTIFF, Shapefile
    Link
    data.globalforestwatch.org

    Verified

  • High Resolution Canopy Height Maps (Meta and WRI) (opens in a new tab)

    Download Cost: Free

    Meta and World Resources Institute · Global

    Global 1 m canopy height map predicted from Maxar satellite imagery with a self-supervised vision transformer (Tolan et al., 2024); GeoTIFF tiles on AWS S3 with no login.

    • Land cover
    • Environment
    Licence
    CC BY 4.0
    Formats
    GeoTIFF
    Link
    registry.opendata.aws

    Verified

  • Microsoft Planetary Computer (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    Microsoft · Global

    Over 100 analysis-ready datasets (Sentinel, Landsat, NAIP, ERA5, land cover) behind a free STAC API; data access needs no account.

    • Imagery
    • Land cover
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Environment
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Per dataset (mostly open; shown on each collection page)
    Formats
    COG, Zarr, STAC
    Link
    planetarycomputer.microsoft.com

    Verified

  • NASA Earthdata Search (opens in a new tab)

    Portal Cost: Free with registration

    NASA · Global

    Search and download the full NASA EOSDIS archive (MODIS, VIIRS, SRTM, ICESat-2, GEDI, SMAP); downloads need a free Earthdata Login.

    • Imagery
    • Elevation / DEM
    • Environment
    • Climate & weather
    Licence
    Public domain (NASA open data policy)
    Formats
    HDF, NetCDF, GeoTIFF
    Link
    search.earthdata.nasa.gov

    Verified

  • EMIT imaging spectrometer and methane plumes (opens in a new tab)

    Portal Cost: Free

    NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory · Global (52°N to 52°S)

    Hyperspectral imaging spectrometer on the International Space Station; JPL publishes mineral dust maps, methane and CO2 enhancement images and a catalogue of detected plume complexes, with an interactive greenhouse gas data portal.

    • Climate & weather
    • Environment
    • Imagery
    Licence
    Public domain
    Formats
    COG, NetCDF, GeoJSON
    Link
    earth.jpl.nasa.gov

    Verified

  • NASA VEDA (Visualization, Exploration and Data Analysis) (opens in a new tab)

    API Cost: Free

    NASA · Global

    Open STAC catalogue and tiling API for NASA Earth science datasets, including EMIT methane enhancement, greenhouse gas fluxes, nighttime lights and air quality; no login needed, with a public dashboard at earthdata.nasa.gov/dashboard.

    • Climate & weather
    • Environment
    • Imagery
    Licence
    Mostly CC0 / public domain (varies by dataset)
    Formats
    COG, Zarr
    Link
    openveda.cloud

    Verified

Environment sources by country

Africa 56 countries

Algeria 2
Angola 2
Benin 2
Botswana 2
Burkina Faso 2
Burundi 2
Cabo Verde 1
Cameroon 2
Central African Republic 2
Chad 2
Comoros 1
Côte d'Ivoire 2
Democratic Republic of the Congo 2
Djibouti 2
Egypt 2
Equatorial Guinea 2
Eritrea 1
Eswatini 2
Ethiopia 2
Gabon 2
Ghana 2
Guinea 2
Guinea-Bissau 2
Kenya 3
Lesotho 2
Liberia 2
Libya 2
Madagascar 2
Malawi 2
Mali 2
Mauritania 2
Mauritius 1
Morocco 2
Mozambique 2
Namibia 2
Niger 2
Nigeria 2
Republic of the Congo 2
Rwanda 2
Saint Helena 1
São Tomé and Príncipe 1
Senegal 2
Seychelles 1
Sierra Leone 2
Somalia 1
South Africa 6
South Sudan 2
Sudan 2
Tanzania 2
The Gambia 2
Togo 2
Tunisia 2
Uganda 2
Western Sahara 1
Zambia 2
Zimbabwe 2

Asia 12 countries

British Indian Ocean Territory 1
Cambodia 2
China 3
Georgia 1
India 1
Japan 1
Kazakhstan 1
Laos 1
Lebanon 1
South Korea 2
Thailand 1
Vietnam 2

Europe 27 countries

Austria 1
Bulgaria 1
Croatia 1
Czechia 2
Denmark 1
Estonia 1
Faroe Islands 1
Finland 1
Germany 3
Greece 1
Hungary 1
Ireland 2
Italy 1
Latvia 1
Lithuania 1
Malta 1
Netherlands 1
Norway 1
Poland 1
Portugal 1
Serbia 1
Slovakia 1
Slovenia 2
Spain 1
Sweden 1
Switzerland 1
United Kingdom 10

North America 10 countries

Belize 1
Canada 1
El Salvador 1
Greenland 2
Mexico 2
Saint Barthélemy 1
Saint Martin 1
Saint Pierre and Miquelon 1
United States 4
United States Virgin Islands 1

South America 14 countries

Argentina 1
Bolivia 2
Brazil 2
Chile 2
Colombia 3
Ecuador 1
Falkland Islands 1
Guyana 1
Paraguay 2
Peru 2
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands 2
Suriname 1
Uruguay 1
Venezuela 1

Oceania 9 countries

American Samoa 1
Australia 10
Guam 1
Micronesia 1
New Zealand 3
Norfolk Island 1
Northern Mariana Islands 1
Palau 1
Pitcairn Islands 1

Antarctica 3 countries

Antarctica 2
French Southern and Antarctic Lands 1
Heard Island and McDonald Islands 2

Tutorials that use environment data