Contact me
Please let me know about any problems you find on the site—thanks.
If you do something cool with my maps and data, drop me a line. I would greatly enjoy seeing what you have done.
Terrain, maps, and more
This site started out as a resource for cartographers creating shaded relief, panoramas, land cover, and related raster art on maps. It has since grown to include my other cartographic interests and has become a repository for my maps, all of which are in the public domain.
I hope that you enjoy the site.
New stuff
Last update: March 5, 2021
This tutorial explains how to process Sentinel-2 satellite data, released by the European Space Agency for free, into beautiful natural color images. The techniques employ Geographic Imager, a GIS plugin for Photoshop.
Physical Features of North America
A map with over 5,000 labels showcasing mountains, plains, rivers, lakes, ocean bathymetry and more. Map colors reflect natural environments throughout the continent from the Greenland ice cap to the tropical rainforests of Central America.
So that mapmakers and researchers have "common ground" for comparative experimentation, this website offers multi-resolution DEMs, and DEMs of archetypal landforms. Use these data for evaluating terrain visualizations and testing software.
An edited and smoothed version of GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans) designed for small-scale mapping of the ocean floor—without unsightly artifacts. It is available as a free GeoTIFF DEM.
A high-oblique view of Mount Everest from the west-northwest. The terrain derives from High Mountain Asia elevation data supplemented with glaciers extracted from a June, 2016, Landsat image. The map is available with and without labels.
Shaded Relief