There appears to be a problem with GDAL utilities not recognizing the possibility that an AAGRID file may contain a mixture of 16 and 32 bit integers. This is not surprising, as the AAGRID file format does not contain any hints about its contents. A ticket was started on the GRASS tracker, but the issue appears to be a purely GDAL bug.
One idea for a fix includes an environmental flag which would cause the AAGRID driver to scan the input file in order to properly determine an appropriate data type. Another approach would be to manually set the data type for any input file from the command line.
Example using the attached file:
gdal_translate big_int_arc_file.asc test.tiff
the resulting file is produced:
gdalinfo -stats test.tiff
Driver: GTiff/GeoTIFF
Files: test.tiff
Size is 7, 7
Coordinate System is `'
Origin = (592000.000000000000000,4926000.000000000000000)
Pixel Size = (1000.000000000000000,-1000.000000000000000)
Image Structure Metadata:
INTERLEAVE=BAND
Corner Coordinates:
Upper Left ( 592000.000, 4926000.000)
Lower Left ( 592000.000, 4919000.000)
Upper Right ( 599000.000, 4926000.000)
Lower Right ( 599000.000, 4919000.000)
Center ( 595500.000, 4922500.000)
Band 1 Block=7x7 Type=Int16, ColorInterp=Gray
Minimum=-31293.000, Maximum=32420.000, Mean=216.837, StdDev=18087.589
NoData Value=-9999
Metadata:
STATISTICS_MINIMUM=-31293
STATISTICS_MAXIMUM=32420
STATISTICS_MEAN=216.83673469388
STATISTICS_STDDEV=18087.589140406