Geography Resources
From the Chico High School Library

You may go directly to the following sections on this page:

Atlases and Gazetteers

Maps, All Types

Other Geographical Information

Atlases and Gazetteers

CIA World Factbook
Information on the countries of the world, from the famous spy center, The Central Intelligence Agency. Find out all the basic data about people, land and politics of a country. Includes maps.

BBC News Country Profiles
Background information about the countries of the world. Country profiles provide an instant guide to history, politics and economic background of countries; also include audio and video clips from the BBC News archives.

Library of Congress: Country Studies
Library of Congress offers this series of online books which provide extensive information on all aspects of the country, its society, natural resources, economy, history, and international relationships.

Bowen's Digital Atlas of the United States
By Professor William Bowen: Maps and demographic information (statistics and/or data on people, places and things) for the United States, with a major section on California.

Digital Atlas of California
By Professor William Bowen, sections include: California Overview, Metropolitan Los Angeles and Vicinity, San Francisco Bay Area, Metropolitan San Diego County, Metropolitan Sacramento and Vicinity. Lots of social data on people is available here.

The National Atlas of the United States
"The National Atlas is being designed to serve the interests and needs of a diverse populace in many ways; as an essential reference; as a framework for information discovery; as an instrument of education; as an aid in research; and as an accurate and reliable source for scientific information."

U.S. Gazetteer Information for Chico
The U.S. Gazetteer gives information about Chico, California and offers a chance to see a map of the area, and to obtain 2000 U.S. Census data as well. You can search for other cities in the U.S. and countries of the world.
 

Maps

Maps of the United Nations
"More than 100 General Maps are currently available. Maps are in PDF format for best display and print results." Some have a lot of detail, while others are less detailed.

Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection
Library Map Collection, at the University of Texas at Austin, holds more than 230,000 maps covering every area of the world.

Maps and References
The maps which are listed here have been selected because they are thought to be reasonably useful and/or interesting. They are categorized by geographical region although there are a couple of thematic categories such as Interactive Maps which both highlights the potential of the WWW and are also fun to use. Note that there is some overlap in geographic coverage between these categories.

The Peters Projection / An Area Accurate Map
"... a map of the world is worth a thousand pictures. Maps help create our world view. They tell us who we are in relation to the other peoples of the earth.... it's important that we use a map whose purpose is to give us a geographically accurate image of the world. The Peters Projection was created in 1974 by Arno Peters to address some of the problems of existing maps, without reproducing existing distortions and biases of other maps."

Online Outline Maps
This site offers a selection of outline maps for use in the classroom or at home. Feel free to print or download any of these maps for your personal use in activities, reports, or stories.

Earth Viewer
With Earth viewer you can view either a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment, or view the Earth from the Sun, the Moon, the night side of the Earth, above any location on the planet specified by latitude, longitude and altitude, or from a satellite in Earth orbit. Images can be generated based on a topographical map of the Earth, up-to-date weather satellite imagery, or a composite image of cloud cover superimposed on a map of the Earth.
 

Other Geographical Information

Population and Housing Unit Estimates
Check here to find estimated current population and facts about states, cities and areas of the U.S., plus a whole lot of other information estimated from the U.S. Census data.

American Fact Finder
Your U.S. Census source for population, housing, economic, and geographic data. This site offers a wide variety of information and ways to display or view it.

Satellite Photos
Declassified satellite photos, from the U.S. Government, are accessible from this site.