Built on public data, credited properly.
Groundtruth draws on 95 upstream public datasets, plus fields we derive ourselves (like wind power density or nearest-feature distances). The land screen uses a subset of them; every value in a report or API response names its source. Groundtruth is independent: no agency, laboratory or data provider below endorses, sponsors or partners with us.
US federal works
Works of the US government are in the public domain in the US (17 U.S.C. 105). We cite them anyway.
| Datasets | Attribution |
|---|---|
| USGS: 3DEP elevation, NHDPlus HR, Watershed Boundary Dataset, NWIS, PAD-US, karst, ASCE 7 seismic, NSHM 2023, landslide susceptibility (Belair et al. 2024, doi:10.5066/P13KAGU3), USWTDB, USPVDB, IWAA water budget | U.S. Geological Survey + dataset DOI |
| EPA: FRS / RMP, SEMS, ACRES, RCRA, UST Finder, Green Book, AQS design values, eGRID2023, RE-Powering, SDWIS, Class I areas | U.S. EPA + product name |
| EIA: Open Data API v2, EIA-860M, EIA-861, Atlas layers, shale plays | U.S. Energy Information Administration |
| HIFLD Open: substations, gas infrastructure, retail service territories, ISO/RTO regions, pipelines | Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data |
| Census: TIGERweb, urban areas, ACS 5-year, population estimates, building permits, Geocoder; BLS QCEW | U.S. Census Bureau / U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics |
| FCC: Broadband Data Collection, Antenna Structure Registration | Federal Communications Commission |
| FEMA NFHL and National Risk Index; USACE National Inventory of Dams, ports; BTS NTAD; FHWA NBI; FAA NASR and special-use airspace | Agency name |
| NOAA: NCEI 1991-2020 normals, nClimGrid-Daily, CUSP shoreline, MarineCadastre submarine cables | NOAA NCEI / NOAA NGS / BOEM & NOAA MarineCadastre.gov |
| USDA: Cropland Data Layer, SSURGO / gNATSGO, STATSGO; USFS LCMS and NLCD tree canopy | USDA NASS / USDA NRCS / USDA Forest Service |
| USFWS: critical habitat, National Wetlands Inventory, golden-eagle nest density | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
| BLM surface management agency, 2024 Solar PEIS; HUD opportunity zones; FHFA house price index | Agency name |
| NSIDC MODIS snow cover | NSIDC dataset DOI |
Licensed and non-federal sources
| Source | Licence | Attribution |
|---|---|---|
| NREL NSRDB (solar resource) | CC BY 3.0 US | Sengupta et al. 2018, "The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB)", Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 89:51-60 |
| NREL WIND Toolkit | CC BY 3.0 US | Draxl et al. 2015, "The Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit", Applied Energy 151:355-366 |
| NREL reV 2024 land-based wind supply curves | Public DOE/NREL data (OEDI 8314) | Geospatial Data Science, NREL. United States Land-based Wind Supply Curves 2024; Lopez et al. 2025, NREL/TP-6A20-91900 |
| NREL PySAM / SAM (PVWatts v8, run by us) | BSD 3-Clause | Output labelled "PVWatts v8 / NSRDB PSM v3" |
| US Drought Monitor | Credit required | The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USDA and NOAA. Map courtesy of NDMC. |
| LBNL Queued Up | Free public data | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| CAL FIRE FHSZ / FRAP; CARB air districts | California public records | CAL FIRE / California Air Resources Board |
| Copernicus Sentinel-2 L2A | Copernicus open data policy | Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [year] |
| JRC Global Surface Water | CC BY 4.0 | Source: EC JRC/Google |
| PVGIS | EC reuse policy / CC BY 4.0 | PVGIS © European Union |
| NASA POWER | Open, attribution requested | Data from the NASA POWER Project |
| Natural Earth | Public domain | Made with Natural Earth |
| OpenStreetMap / OpenInfraMap | ODbL 1.0 (share-alike) | © OpenStreetMap contributors |
| Overture Maps | CDLA-Permissive-2.0 (places); ODbL (buildings, transportation, divisions) | © Overture Maps Foundation, plus OpenStreetMap attribution for ODbL themes |
What this means for you
- If you display values from NREL, Copernicus, the US Drought Monitor, OpenStreetMap or Overture, show the attribution above.
- OpenStreetMap-derived data is ODbL share-alike. In bulk exports, we ship these layers as separate, attributed files so they don't mix with your proprietary data.
- Licences can change. We review upstream terms regularly; the latest terms from each provider always take precedence.