Google Earth is a free virtual globe viewer. The program provides a detailed base map, many informational features, and can also be used to view spatial data added by the user, which are in the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file format. Many KML files are included in this website and/or DVD-ROM.

Google Earth Home Page

MapWindow is a free and Open source GIS that runs on Windows. MapWindow can display many common GIS file types and through the use of plug ins, can perform GIS editing tasks such as creating, editing, reprojecting, buffering, and clipping shapefiles. MapWindow GIS reads, writes, and edits files which are compatible with existing commercial GIS technology. Many GIS technicians and environmental scientists rarely use the complicated features of the commercial software, so it can be an excellent choice for providing GIS capabilities across an organization without the expense of commercial software.

MapWindow GIS Home page

7-Zip is a free and open source zipping and unzipping utility which is available for windows. 7-Zip can create and unzip .zip archives. Many of the data layers distributed on this CD-ROM comprise numerous files, making it difficult to distribute them via standard hyperlinks. For users' convenience, we have included .zip archives of these layers and features which require two or more files to function properly.

7zip Home Page