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| Shapefiles (.SHP) can be downloaded to your computer in ESRI shapefile format, which consists of several related files in one zipped document. Shapefile format requires ArcGIS Explorer, ArcMap or other Geographic Information System (GIS) software to view, but is the best choice if you wish to perform geographic analysis. |
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| Access© (.MDB) databases can be opened in Access© if you have MS Office, or any of the ArcGIS suite of products. |
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| Excel© (.XLS) documents can be viewed in Excel© if you have MS Office, Google Documents or OpenOffice.org. |
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| KMZ documents are stored as zip files. They must be downloaded and unzipped before they can be viewed in Google Earth, to allow visualizing spatial data. |
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| CSV documents are comma-delimitted text files and can be imported into many different software packages. |
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| Metadata (.XML) documents are published with the data and are descriptions of the datasets. We use ISO 19115 standards. The red icon links to the XML format for the metadata, the blue icon links to an HTML format. |
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