[Nathaniel]

@Pete: You’re welcome! Please feed any corrections our way so we can stay current, either in the forum here or using the Corrections tab above. We have an update to roll out for some better naming on 50% of the data in the most populous, largest geography countries. Sometime this fall into winter on timing. Keep up your good work!

[Nathaniel]

Thanks for the update and sharing your research!

[Nathaniel]

Thanks, Robert!

[Nathaniel]

Thanks, Robert!

[Nathaniel]

You might try clipping that ocean shapefile with a ±90 ±180 bounding box. Some open source tools don’t like polys that are outside of the normal extents (eg: part of that polygon might be north of 90°). Hoping to fix that in the data eventually, sorry for the inconvenience!

[Nathaniel]

@Stephan: There are shapefile parser libraries for most languages. Alternatively, you can install GRASS or QGIS and export out using a GDAL like tool the vector part of the shapefile to XY ordered text list.

[Nathaniel]

Stephan,

The shapefiles provided on the download pages are about as raw as they come. Are you having problems importing them? Into what software?

_Nathaniel

[Nathaniel]

@Mary: The mouseOver is a general description for all the data (that is is available in one, but not necc. all, of those formats), it is not specific to individual themes. You’ll need to use a plugin like MaPublisher in Adobe Illustrator to import the raw SHP format files, or using a GIS like ESRI or open source like QGIS to convert the vector to a raster format that 3d max can import.

_Nathaniel

[Nathaniel]

@Willis: Thanks for the compliments! There is already an admin-0 code on all the populated places. If you’re not seeing that in the simple version, download the detailed version. For the admin-1 unit, those are draft still so don’t use them as gospel. We’re 50% thru fixing them. It’s best to do a point in poly test, then for the unmatched ones, figure out which poly the point is closest to (it’s might be just a tiny bit away from the poly). For the admin-0 sub-units: be aware that ISO countries are not correct. If you need to match them, fine, but Natural Earth uses a more consistent sorting. French Guiana, for instance, is just like Alaska. It shouldn’t be counted as a top-level country.

[Nathaniel]

@Silamon: We have no plans to offer country specific downloads in Natural Earth (versus the whole-world download we now offer). The entire Natural Earth vector dataset is fairly small and manageable and you can clip it to a specific country post download if that is your use case. You can clip out a rectangle bounding box, including multiple select themes at once, at WeoGeo and other sites.

On another note: Do you have river, road or railroad map data for Indonesia and/or neighboring countries to contribute to Natural Earth?

[Nathaniel]

That’s a nice map of the Isle of Man!

1) No vector elevation data is planned at this time. For a map of Isle of Man, you would need more detailed data than we provide with Natural Earth, which is to 1:10,000,000 scale. There are many sources of 1km scale digital elevation models. But ur’re right, it is frustrating to step from a 90 meter dem back to desired scale, srtm or otherwise.

2) I’ll ask Tom to fill in the back story on that. It is not a simple task.

3) Any raster software can make abrupt transition elevationtints for u. Instead of spacing the breaks far apart, stack them close together (instead of 1000 and then 2000, do 1000 and 1001). I prefer using the cheap Natural Scene Designer for generating my shaded relief and color tints.

4) Try looking at Tom’s website for tutorials.

5) it is better to resample the source digital terrain model (dtm / dem) to near your target scale and resolution and then generate new contours. Generalizing contours to another scale is rarely successful.

5) Open source software and workflow for simplyfying elevation/contour polygons

[Nathaniel]

Not sure what u mean. Please give example.

[Nathaniel]

Typo, thanks for catching that. Mind submitting a correction, please? https://www.naturalearthdata.com/corrections/

There should be a separate map unit for Kaliningrad, however.

[Nathaniel]

@Ed: I should also note that there is a special version of admin-0 called “scale ranks” that has an exploded single part version of the countries instead of the “multipart” shapefile that might work well for you. https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vectors/10m-admin-0-details/

[Nathaniel]

@Ed: Email me the picture at nathaniel@naturalearthdata.com.

[Nathaniel]

@Ed: Thanks for your comments on the project! The 10m admin do have some topology issues at present and hope to have that fixed in a later version. If you have access to Info license you can run “integrate” on it for a temporary fix. The overlap is not very much, however. But they only apply when zoomed into say 250k scale or 40 times the detail of the actual linework. So you might be getting accurate topology, but not at the right precision. Any feature that falls within a couple miles of the border would be affected, even if the topology were right. For your project I suggest you do a buffer on the border lines and find out what percentage of your thematic points are within the border area (and what are not) to determine if this is a real issue or not. If most of your features aren’t along the border, the admin-0 10m will work fine for you. If this remains a problem, you might use GADM from Berkeley which is to a higher precision (variable).

[Nathaniel]

@BPlewe: A generalized, 1:10m appropriate EEZ boundary was originally included in Natural Earth 1.0 but were removed at the request of the Flanders Marine Institute (the source before the linework was simplified for consistency with the rest of the NE linework and the attributes were simplified). Their licensing terms, as you point out, are contradictory. If you look in the notes section / “More Info” resources area, we actually link to them. Natural Earth does retain the maritime boundary “indicator” but not the full set. Regarding the Pacific Grouping Lines, those are useful when making maps at small scale and prob. should only be used with 110m and 50m scale maps, but remains included in NE for reference.

[Nathaniel]

@Erik: Thanks for the fascinating update! Please email me the image previews at nathaniel@naturalearthdata.com and I’ll post them here. Yes, we can host your modified, attributed 10m-urban-areas as part of Natural Earth. Email me to figure out delivery mechanism. For the “missing” populated places, many of those will come with the 1.3 update of the populated places file I’m working on now. For that, the larger unassociated polygons will gain points, but some of the smaller ones will remain unnamed as they are not appropriate to show on a 10m scale map. Still working out that threshold. I’ve gone thru the GeoNames.org all-countries 2.3m feature count file and done much of the work to match the towns with their urban areas. Curious on the bad bounding box overlap, I’ll look into that.

[Nathaniel]

@MattFox: Cool! Thanks for sharing.

[Nathaniel]

@Erik: Glad you like the project. Your guess is correct about the BB being bounding box. These are derived from the Landscan polygons that approximate urban areas, not incorporated boundaries. This distinction is important as many large center cities have a large ring of 2ndary towns and suburbs around them that aren’t technically part of the core’s jurisdiction.

The Natural Earth bounding boxes incorporates those areas, as do the population numbers. The MAX version shows the largest extent of that city in the dataset. This is the first scale that the town appears at (starting back from 300m then several steps to 10m). As the fidelity narrows down by adding in more regional centers, even in metro areas that already have a primary central city, the bounding box narrows down as well. The MIN version is the 10m scale with all the Natural Earth populated places counted. Think of these as the intersection of the landscan population urban area (separate download on the 10m populated places page) and cut by Thiessen polgyons between the points.

Matching up the urban areas to populated places would be awesome!

An approach using Thiessen polgyons against the urban areas and then doing a spatial join between the cut urban areas and the populated places could be a good approach. Not all urban areas will be named in the 10m coverage as there are many more urban areas than towns in the 10m coverage. (The forthcoming populated places 1.2 version will address this to a point.) You might try clipping the Thiessen results by 50 miles for 110m first-appearance cities down to 5 miles for 10m first-appearance cities.

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