The Michigan Office of Geological Survey appears to have pdf versions of all the documents in their Digital Geological Library available for download. The transcripts of some early (beginning in 1871) field notes are a fun inclusion in the available archives. Actual GIS data was a bit hard to find although I found both bedrock geology and quarternary geology available from the state Geographic Data Library in shapefile format. I also found oil and gas well data but did not download it.

The Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey has a well organized, appealing website. Their data is easy to find although there is not much GIS data available. Although because I am more interested in sample data sets than anything, the GIS data they do have–statewide geologic map; pleistocene geology, precambrian geology, quaternary geology, (surficial?) geology and bedrock geology for various counties–may actually be a great reference. Other than the statewide geologic map, the data is available on a per-publication basis.

Ok, maybe I have been hiding under a rock, but just saw this is a post from James Fee’s Spatially Adjusted blog. ESRI has a public suggestion box called ArcGIS Ideas where users can submit suggestions for ESRI. One thing I like is that it is open for other users to see and comment. Not sure how responsive ESRI will be but at least it gives us a place to vent.

The Iowa Geological Surveyhas a lot of data available to download here. PDF versions of many of their publications can be found in their List of Publications. Their GIS data is minimally attributed for the most part, their public wells data set did have a more robust attribution scheme. One cool feature I found in the wells data is that they provide a hyper-link for many features to an on-line site record.

While working on a VB.Net form to query a database that includes an optional date range query, I decided I wanted to display a datetimepicker with a blank value by default and then, if the user sets a date show the date. By default, a datetimepicker can not have a Null date, so I went a’Googling and found this post, .NET Reference: Setting the DateTimePicker to a Blank Value,that had exactly the technique I wanted.

The South Dakota Geological Survey website provides some good base data–imagery, DRGs, DEMs, and DLGs. There is a searchable database of core cuttings and the state data server has bedrock data for the eastern portion of the state and a statewide layer, presumably surficial geology, called geology. Quad-based geological maps are also available (PDF format) in the Publications and Maps section. The data I downloaded was in shapefile format with minimal attribution.

Took a quick look at the North Dakota Geological Survey’s website for GIS data. The only data I found served directly from their website was surface geology map .pdfs for some 24k and 100k maps. Also available is a search for Oil & Gas wells although I did not see the data was downloadable. Some other publications have .pdfs that can be downloaded. The North Dakota Hub Explorer serves as the state’s official data portal including for GIS data.

Right before the Users Conference, ESRI has released ArcGIS Desktop 9.3.1 Service Pack Haven’t had a chance to see what bugs this addresses yet.

I was looking for links to all the State Geological Surveys and found the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) Homepage to have exactly what I needed. I hope to build some sort of inventory of data samples available. If I do one a day, I can be done in 10 weeks, or about 3 months. What I will find the most useful is data distribution methods and data structures.

So I have a nightly process that runs and I, being the lazy programmer I am, didn’t want to bother checking a log file each morning to see how it went. The natural answer is to have the results emailed to me because I do have to check my email. Since the process is already handled mostly in python, thought I would implement the emailing via python. It was actually simple enough to do–just required figuring out the setting for my SMTP server (actually I didn’t figure it our for my work server so I’m using my GMail account).