Global environmental data sets must be made more widely available to the research community on media that are easily used to support global scale research. The Center for remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis of Rutgers University and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) have signed an agreement that allows Rutgers to make available on CD-ROM GlobalARC, the new ArcInfo version of the Global GRASS Digital data sets 1, 2, and 5. This data set includes 84 themes and a total of 147 raster layers from various sources; including global elevation, vegetation, green leaf biomass (AVHRR composites), national boundaries, soils, and marine productivity (Coastal Zone Color Scanner), among others. The GlobalARC CD-ROM can be used with both ArcInfo and ArcView 2. This paper describes the global database project, the data set, and its ability to support global research and teaching.