We are rebuilding this venerable cartographic dataset from scratch at 1:7,500,000-scale, starting with coastlines, rivers, lakes, glaciers, and Antarctic ice shelves. Preliminary data are now available for download.
This website offers over 150 hand-drawn reliefs created by twentieth century artists. The reliefs are georeferenced, high-resolution, and availabe for free. Many of the smaller-scale reliefs register to Natural Earth drainage vectors.
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.
100-meter Natural Earth of the US, Puerto Rico, & US Virgin Islands
A re-release of the Natural Earth relief/land cover data made for the US National Atlas. The georeferenced raster images match the National Atlas vector linework. Data coverage includes only the United States and affiliated areas.
Big Island of Hawai‘i Landsat Mosaic
A georeferenced mosaic comprised of 10 Landsat scenes. The natural-color image, pan-sharpened to 15-meter resolution, is seamless and cloud-free.
Manual Shaded Relief of the Contiguous US
The relief art also includes southern Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. It is available as a grayscale GeoTIFF (12,578 x 9,494 pixels), registers with Natural Earth 1:10 million vector data, and is in the Web Mercator projection.
Manual Shaded Relief of the World
This page describes a generalized shaded relief that I drew, intended for making small-scale maps of the world and continents. The relief image registers with Natural Earth vector data. It is available as a grayscale GeoTIFF (10,800 x 5,400 pixels).
Here you will find matched raster and vector data for making small-scale maps at 1:10 million, 1:50 million, and 1:110 million scale. The vector data is fully attributed, including cultural and physical place names, river tapering, and much more.
World Relief with Cross-blended Hypsometric Tints
Raster map art featuring shaded relief combined with elevation colors matched to the natural environment —desert lowlands are brown, humid lowlands are green, and ice caps blue-gray. Soft blues fill the oceans becoming lighter in the shallows.
Natural Earth III – Data for Visualizing Earth from Space
Raster map data for creating illustrations and animations of Earth, including realistic land cover textures, 3D mountains, custom cloud maps, polar sea ice, and city lights at night. Includes desktop pictures of Earth.
Natural Earth II – World Environment Map Data in Natural Color
A raster map dataset that portrays the world environment in an idealized manner with little human influence. A successor dataset to the original Natural Earth, the smoothly blended colors and shaded relief make it an ideal base for general-purpose mapping.
Natural Earth I – World Land Cover Map Data
A raster base map of Earth made from public domain data featuring combined land cover and shaded relief. Peruse a gallery of dramatic landscapes from around the world, download a poster-sized wall map, or download the raw data.
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