Spatial Reserves

This data and society blog Spatial Reserves frequently discusses the rapidly changing environment in which all of us in the geospatial field discover, access, and use data. How we access imagery in a GIS environment is also rapidly transforming, resulting in spending less time searching and formatting, and more time on analysis and decision-making. As announced in 2025, Esri launched the Content Store, a web app developed by Esri and SkyWatch that simplifies the process of accessing commercial satellite imagery. SkyWatch, a geospatial platform, is “on a mission is to democratize access to Earth observation and remote sensing data.”

To learn more, start here. The Content Store is free to use but credits need to be purchased to access the imagery. Search for existing premium Earth Observation Data, using areas of interest (AOIs) or from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. SkyWatch says that you can access “over 90% of commercial Earth Observation satellites with a few clicks.” After finding the imagery you need, you check out with Content Store Credits or a credit card, only paying for the data purchased. You then visualize the data within Content Store, download, and then you could publish Tiled Imagery Layers or Tile Layers via the ArcGIS Transfer App into your own, or your organization’s ArcGIS account.

The above “start here” site provides guidance on provisioning your organization in this document and details on credits you can use to purchase imagery in Content Store in this guide.

This capability touches on a trend we have noted in this blog space for quite some time – the coupling of search tools with ways of integrating the imagery seamlessly into a GIS workflow. It is truly an amazing time to be in GIS and remote sensing with these capabilities.

I look forward to hearing from anyone using the above tools and your reaction to its ease of use.

—Joseph Kerski

A new resource is very helpful for learning about Cloud Optimized data formats and sharing this information with colleagues:   https://zines.developmentseed.org/zines/cloud-native/#zine/1/  As an educator I particularly like it for its comic-magazine presentation style. I salute the Development Seed folks who put this together and know and think very highly of the authors, Kiri Carini. Through this resource, you will learn about COG, COPC, ZARR, and Geoparquet formats and how they work.

Why do these cloud optimized formats matter? As I hope our Spatial Reserves blog makes clear, data formats, data access methods, data quality, data sources, and the ways we as a community approach, work with, and teach with GIS are all simultaneously and rapidly evolving. Cloud optimized data formats allow information to be accessed and analyzed more quickly than traditional raster and vector formats, enabling sound decision making in increasingly time-sensitive environments.

As one example, a Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) is a GeoTIFF file with an internal organization that enables more efficient workflows in the cloud environment.  It does this by leveraging the ability of clients issuing ​HTTP GET range requests to ask for just the parts of a file they need.

Per https://guide.cloudnativegeo.org/, these formats offer the following advantages over traditional storage and formats:

Reduced Latency: Subsets of the raw data can be fetched and processed much faster than downloading files. Scalability: Cloud-optimized formats are usually stored on cloud object storage, which is infinitely scalable. Object storage supports many parallel read requests when combined with metadata about where different data bits are stored, making it easier to work with large datasets. Flexibility: Cloud-optimized formats allow for high levels of customization, enabling users to tailor data access to their specific needs. Additionally, advanced query capabilities provide the freedom to perform complex operations on the data without downloading and processing entire datasets. Cost-Effectiveness: Reduced data transfer and storage needs can lower costs. Many of these formats offer compression options, which reduce storage costs.

One of the pages from this resource. Source: Development Seed.

I wish we had more of these types of graphics to explain complex topics in GIS (and in other fields) in an understandable way!

I look forward to your reactions.

–Joseph Kerski

Erin on https://erdavis.com/datasets/ has posted some fascinating and unusual data sets that I encourage you to investigate, for teaching, research, visualization, and to learn more about coding-with-mapping.

As a geographer who loves roads, I am particularly fond of Erin’s “road suffixes mileage” data set, and waterfalls, too (who doesn’t love waterfalls?). Erin even posted a set of intriguing visualizations about books read over the past year, which is near and dear to my heart as each New Year’s Day I post a video about the books I have read over the prior year. Erin takes this to the next level entirely!

One of my other favorites is this fall color map and dataset (below). As with other maps and data sets, Erin explains how she worked with the data to clean it, map it, and analyze it. From an instructional standpoint, especially if you are teaching coding-with-GIS courses and looking for intriguing examples, this will be particularly helpful. Erin says “almost all of my work is done in R–from data collection and analysis through visualization. I usually add in text, headers, and legends in AI/PS. I rely heavily on the tidyverse (especially ggplot and dplyr) and the sf package for mapping.”

You could even take one of the hosted data sets, of the British Bakeoff Competition, for example, and add the places where that food or dish originated, and then map it.

More than an archive of data, Erin’s creative geo-visualizations I trust will spark some ideas of your own about how to communicate geo-information and other information graphically. If you need any help with your projects, Erin is also open to freelancing and partnering with you!

Thank you Erin! Readers, I look forward to your comments.

–Joseph Kerski

The site https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=927944e867624504bfd6c489b0d2aec7 gives you access to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, the world’s largest database of species observations, aggregating over 3 billion records from ~2,500 organizations, including iNaturalist, OBIS, and eBird. This Geoprocessing Tool for ArcGIS Pro (version 3.2.x and newer) queries the GBIF API and returns up to 100,000 records for a single species.

At the moment, you need to use a tool in ArcGIS Pro to access it. To do so, see the above URL, and find the data set by searching Living Atlas for “GBIF” in the Catalog Portal pane. Use the Item ID 927944e867624504bfd6c489b0d2aec7 for a more specific search. Right click the result and select Add To Project. 

After entering a genus, species, and your study area, you can then filter by time period, and you will receive 23 fields from the data set. This joins other recent truly big data announcements (including iNaturalist, here: https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com/2024/10/14/accessing-and-using-90-million-inaturalist-crowdsourced-data-records/), in rapidly expanding the number and diversity of data on our natural world available to GIS analysts (and others).

Be sure to read the terms of use, which includes ” Under the terms of the GBIF data user agreement, users who download individual datasets or search results and use them in research or policy agree to cite them using a DOI, or Digital Object Identifier” and other important information.

I look forward to your reactions! As for me, my head is still spinning!

–Joseph Kerski

Ownership and sovereignty of geospatial data is a key concern of our times and a topic we frequently address in this blog space. Jonathan Murphy has written what I consider to be the most important and thoughtful essay about digital sovereignty of our times, here:

https://gogeomatics.ca/canada-can-no-longer-pretend-digital-sovereignty-isnt-at-risk/

Jonathan is the CEO, President, and Founder of GoGeomatics Canada. He is also the founder and chair of GeoIgnite, Canada’s national geospatial leadership conference, and Canada’s National Geomatics expo. Jon has created Canada’s largest professional geospatial network, aiming to strengthen and empower our geospatial ecosystem.  Thus, Jonathan has spent a time in thought about this important issue, and the article applies not just to Canada, but has implications in many areas of our increasingly interconnected and complex world–a world of a mixture of publicly-funded and privately-funded data, a myriad of where that data is stored, and who owns it.

Jonathan sent me this summary of the article and Jonathan’s current thinking about this issue: “Geospatial data is central to national decision making, countries face a choice: outsource critical systems and risk strategic dependency, or invest in resilient national capacity that keeps data, tools, and decisions under domestic control. Digital sovereignty is not isolation. It is about ensuring that the datasets and platforms governments rely on are trustworthy, auditable, and available when they are needed most.”

“Achieving that requires more than buying software. It means modern procurement that values long term data stewardship, investment in national imagery and sensors, open standards that enable interoperability, and training a new generation of analysts and technologists. It also means practical international cooperation on shared problems while guarding against single point dependencies. In short, sovereignty is a policy and an operational agenda. Countries that treat it as both will be better positioned to manage risk, innovate, and serve their citizens.”

I would be interested in your reaction to this article, and your comments about data sovereignty–if you are dealing with it in your organization, and how.

–Joseph Kerski

Articles, encouragements, and warnings about AI (Artificial Intelligence) in GIS are, as many of us in the geospatial industry knew they would, are appearing at an increasing pace. If you only have time this week to read one of these articles, I encourage you to make it the one by Eric Pimpler. Why? First, through his role in running GeoSpatial Training Services, Eric keeps a keen eye on the pulse of what is happening in the geospatial industry, workforce, and society. Second, Eric has a gift of being able to separate what is really important to all of us in GIS in a thoughtful way.

Eric’s article, https://geospatialtraining.com/the-ai-revolution-is-coming-for-gis-what-you-need-to-know-about-microsofts-latest-warning/ begins with Eric’s review of Microsoft’s recent list of 40 occupations most at risk from AI disruption. Eric points out that Geographers sits in position 33 on the list. Eric brings up “virtual satellite” AlphaEarth as an example of a disruption not just in tools or job duties, but in the whole way we have conceptualized a GIS data-and-analysis workflow over the past decade. Eric then explains why GIS professionals are “in AI’s crosshairs” due to their work in pattern recognition, repetitive workflows, and other tasks that GeoAI tools are already doing with increasing accuracy and precision. After discussing near and longer-term impacts, Eric explains how AI will reshape GIS work, ending with a positive set of encouragements and advice on the technical and human-centered skills that will keep you, the GIS professional, relevant. And Eric doesn’t end there, but also includes a strategic action plan for preparing for the AI transition.

I appreciate so much that Eric touches on many of the ethical and other principles that have been a cornerstone of this blog, such as here and here. I’ve been articulating a related message in many of my workshops, courses, and keynote addresses over the past 2 years, namely, that more people in GIS than ever before are not coming from geography departments, but from an increasing array of disciplines. This widening diversity of GIS professionals I think will embrace these changes more readily than if all of us hailed from the same disciplines, but (1) we must work together and share expertise and strategies!, and (2) we must articulate the core tenets of geospatial more now than ever–scale, resolution, projections, appropriate symbology and classification, and more. Why? Because a widening group of people who have never had a GIS course or background will be using GIS tools through AI. This is good in that the spatial perspective will be informing more decisions, but the challenge is that the people in this additional wider community may not know what questions to ask or who to consult with for advice. This is exactly where the geospatial community could and must step forward and let ourselves be known to people outside of our community.

I am not wearing rose-colored glasses here, thinking that all of those people who will use GIS will think of asking the GIS professional community first before they use GIS. Certainly there will be more maps and mapped data than ever before, much of it good, much of it cause for concern. But with an increased visibility of the geospatial community, my hope is that the community will be consulted with, for better decision making for all. Indeed, the advent of AI in GIS could be the geospatial community’s finest hour!

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on Eric’s article and my reflections.

–Joseph Kerski