California Spatial Information Library (CaSIL)

Welcome to the California Spatial Information Library. CaSIL provides free online access to some of California’s digital physical and cultural geospatial information. CaSIL was created to provide a central location where State and federal agencies and regional/local governments can provide their GIS data sets. We encourage your contributions, participation, and feedback in making CaSIL a dynamic and constantly improving resource.

• CaSIL - the California Spatial Information Library is at casil.ucdavis.edu/casil. CaSIL is an online library of California's geospatial data, including base map or framework data (e.g., hydrography, topography, transportation, etc.). You may use FTP or HTTP to access the CaSIL data holdings and treat them as one big file system. The collections are organized thematically.


• Frequently Accessed Data Layers This is a collection of commonly used GIS datasets for California. It includes datasets formally offered by the Teale Data Center. Most data are maintained in an Albers projection to enable overlay and integration functions and statewide analyses, and are organized by theme.


• Interactive Mapping is a starting point for various online geographic access tools for California.

News - Recent Changes to CaSIL

In order to provide better service, CERES has split some of its geographic information systems among multiple servers. Here are some of the changes that users should see:

• casil.ucdavis.edu has this new front page.


• CaSIL is now thematically based.


• Most datasets have been converted to North American Datum (NAD) 83.


• The previous organization of CaSIL, based on data provider, will be made available for a limited amount of time at: old.casil.ucdavis.edu/casil. This directory structure is no longer supported, and will be removed in early 2007.


• The CaSIL gforge system has been moved to gforge.casil.ucdavis.edu. This system allows for collaborative development of geospatial data, and provides tools for file archives, mailing lists, forums, etc.

Note: CMCC continues to update and improve spatial data in the library and provide access or links to more up-to-date data served by others as need and funding permit. Caution should be exercised when using some of the geospatial data layers as some layers are somewhat outdated; particularly those datasets that change rapidly (i.e., schools, health facilities, etc.). We strongly recommend that users refer to the metadata or information about GIS datasets for appropriate uses of the data, source information, scale information, and general quality.

We would like to gratefully acknowledge NASA's past funding support for CaSIL under Cooperative Agreement Notice 97-MTPE-02.