We’re proud to announce the immediate availability of Natural Earth 2.0.0!

1. Economic geography: adds global roads, railroads, ports, airports, and time zones to show how people are interconnected and goods route (read Richard Florida on airports, full legal document about time zones and international date line shifts, and background on the E-Road network).
2. Remastered geometries: fixes topological errors at 1:10 to 1:1,000 scales in the basic coastline, ocean, land, admin-0, and admin-1 related themes for files in the the 1:10m scaleset. By removing self-intersections, sliver polygons, and adjusting offset polygons, Natural Earth imports into more GIS software (like PostGIS) and will be easier to maintain. The coastline is adjusted to better conform to ~1:3,000,000 satellite imagery. Because of all these changes, some raster themes are also updated. Land, ocean, and minor islands all build topologically by scripting ingredients, as do the admin-0 and admin-1 cultural themes.
3. Introduce Gray Earth rasters. Worldwide terrain depicted monochromatically in shades of gray. It combines shaded relief and regionally adjusted hypsography that emphasizes both high mountains and the micro terrain found in lowlands. View new raster »
4. New file name and field name schemas. Full adoption of ne_10m_theme_name.shp file names with `ne_` prefix to allow better import into GeoDB and PostGIS storage, lowercase field (column) names instead of MiXeD and UPPER cased names, and use of consistent `name` field (versus name1).
5. Address user submitted bug reports, ~25 since the 1.4 release, and earlier.
6. Moved to Github for the backend versioned file management and coordination. Includes scripts to package updates and auto-create derived themes. View Natural Earth Vector on Github »
7. Adopt semantic versioning. Know, by theme, the level of effort needed to update your maps when Natural Earth data updates are released. Read more about Natural Earth versioning »

Other notable changes:

Contributors

Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso and Tom Patterson 8 November 2012

Changelog

• UPDATED: NE_ADMIN_0 - Updated for South Sudan, map colors (now with 7, 8, 9 and 13 options), population figures, removed () from notes, and more. note: diffs between sov, adm0, map units, map subunits, and new breakaways are all calculated on the a3 codes now, no longer mix of names and a3 codes. Added and split note_adm0 and note_brk to note which countries are parts of which sovereignties and who’s breaking away or disputing. One spurious “county” feature code fixed to “country” (finland). Added labelrank on all. Added new mapcolors (7, 8, 9 and old 13). Includes new detail on Caribbean Netherlands map unit. Adds more detail to Bhutan disputed areas. Now includes continent codes, and future region code placeholder columns. Added name_len to know when to abbreviate labels. Added label ranks.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_ADMIN_0_BOUNDARY_LINES_LAND - Minor updates to alignment of boundary lines (and topology fixes), additional coding to allow official US gov’t view of same. better disputed coding, including Kosovo. Densified vertex along lines to allow smooth projection into conics. Moved Omani exclave Madha to correct location. Adds left and right labels and codes. Fixes: N96NSYPAPV, ZQNTN5VGDD, Z8ZYYUQZVS.
• UPDATED: NE_50M_ADMIN_1_STATES_PROVINCES_SHP – Added some new ISO coding, other minor changes. Fixes topology errors. Adds admin-1 for brazil and australia. Uses same coding as 10m files. Derived from new scale rank version.
• **NEW**: NE_10M_ADMIN_0_ANTARCTICA_CLAIMS – Although countries have paused their claims to the southernmost continent, they haven’t suspended them. Thanks, Hans!
• **NEW**: NE_10M_ADMIN_0_ANTARCTICA_CLAIM_LIMIT_LINES – Although countries have paused their claims to the southernmost continent, they haven’t suspended them. Thanks, Hans!
• UPDATED: NE_10M_POPULATED_PLACES – A couple name corrections (Morelia, Mexico spelling fixed. Mazatlan, Mexico spelling fixed. Clarified confusion around Tabatinga / Leticia on the Colombian / Brazilian border. On the Brazil / Bolivia border, clarified Brasileia / Cobija. Fixed spelling of Shuozhou, China), many population max values, mostly in China, India, rift valley (Africa), Nigeria, and other countries in east Asia, but some elsewhere. Made sure cities in Switzerland are coded admin-0 of CH and China are CN. Moved Amundsen Base to 176° so it’s in the -12 timezone. Also moved Peter I Island. Vatican City is also moved to be contained by it’s admin-0 polygon. Same for San Marino. Added a poprank column with 0 to 14 numerical classes. Deleted spurious Extra Eureka town in Canada near Greenland. Delete duplicate town Urengoy in RUS, rename the real one Novy Urengoy. Fixes: 4SUAZ7BB49, D459XT1Z6Y.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_COASTLINE – Better matches modern satellite imagery to zoom 8-ish. The earlier coastline could have been several kilometers off (like in Gibraltar). Several large new islands added. Includes densified vertex along lines to allow smooth projection into conics.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_RIVERS_LAKE_CENTERLINES – See changelog for ne_10m_rivers_lake_centerlines_scale_ranks for details.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_RIVERS_LAKE_CENTERLINES_SCALE_RANKS – Updated river names, few new rivers, splits. added river connector in Sweden between lake near Stockholm and Baltic Sea. Fixes in France and Netherlands. Fixes Mackenzie river at it’s confluence with Dawson river in Australia. Names the Mahakam in Borneo (Rivernum 544). Changes scalerank on Nelson river in Canada. Fixes: SHAWNZQJ3B, 5J47B13PJ7, W9X539LBUT, 35YLBL2W9Z.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_RIVERS_LAKE_CENTERLINES_NORTH_AMERICA_SUPPLEMENT – Updated river names, few new rivers, splits. Fixes: SHAWNZQJ3B, 5J47B13PJ7.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_RIVERS_LAKE_CENTERLINES_EUROPE_SUPPLEMENT – Updated river names, few new rivers, splits. fixed topology errors. Fixes: SHAWNZQJ3B.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_LAKES – Removed major lake groupings (Great Lakes, Finger Lakes, etc) to geography label areas instead. Title cased the feature class values. Added Swedish lake near Stockholm (had been extension of Baltic Sea in ocean theme). Fixed topology errors. Fixed a few reservoir and salt lake codes (thanks Craig!).
• UPDATED: NE_10M_LAKES_NORTH_AMERICA_SUPPLEMENT – Name1 have been changed to name, name to name, name2 to name_alt. Fixes 4VA9P9UGQE.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_GEOGRAPHIC_LINES – New int’l date line, thanks Alex! Also densified linework for smoother projection into conics.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_LAND – A dissolved version of the original 1.x file, now renamed “ne_10m_land_scale_rank”, see that changelog for full details. Fixes XAWXTN54GT.
• **NEW**: NE_10M_LAND_SCALE_RANKS – Renamed our original land file to this. Incorporates new coastline. Includes densified vertex along lines to allow smooth projection into conics. Fixes XAWXTN54GT.
• UPDATED: NE_10M_OCEAN – A dissolved version of the original 1.x file, now renamed “ne_10m_ocean_scale_rank”, see that changelog for full details. Fixes XAWXTN54GT.
• **NEW**: NE_10M_OCEAN_SCALE_RANKS – Renamed our original ocean file to this. Incorporates new coastline. Removed Swedish lake near Stockholm (had been extension of Baltic Sea in ocean theme) to lakes layer. Incorporates new coastline. Includes densified vertex along lines to allow smooth projection into conics. Fixes XAWXTN54GT.

Over 65 files have changed in version 1.4 of Natural Earth. The most significant edits reflect the July 2011 independence of South Sudan. That country’s administrative level-1 units have also been refreshed, and the disputed area of Abyei is retained.

Mea culpa: A major correction fixes a coding error introduced in version 1.3 that incorrectly merged Panama and Papua New Guinea into a super country in some admin-0 files. Version 1.4 reestablishes them as separate countries.

Because of South Sudan, the admin-0 (sovereign, country, map units, map subunits, scale ranks, scale ranks with minor islands), boundary lines land, disputed areas and boundaries, etc. have all been updated in the 10m, 50m, 110m scale sets.

50m admin-1 states and provinces now includes a version with the lakes punched out, like the 10m has enjoyed since version 1.3.

The 10m admin-1 file now includes a “scale rank” exploded version that will import into a wider range of GIS and CAD software packages that cannot import polygons over a certain vertex count.

Other changes and corrections are detailed below and credited to the correction request author.

Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso and Tom Patterson 19 August 2011

DETAILS

Lakes, 10m

A lake south of Kaunas on the Nemunas river has been recoded as an artificial reservoir named “Kauno marios”. 84871518GL via Donatas Bruzas

Rivers, 10m

Database structure changes: Name1 is now Name, Name2 is now Name_alt Attribute changes: Several dozen missing strokes weights were corrected, 1/2 dozen scaleRanks. One new mystery river segment.

There are some northern European rivers with accent mark problems. Please note them and your corrections will be incorporated into the next version of Natural Earth.

River changes in this release, Daniel Huffman unless otherwise noted:

1YX8QAUPWZ, T5JUWZ8UT6, 2GL1PTDTXW, V6GNB2AXR1, XTAVLERD11

1. 1. The stream marked as the Parana in Argentina has been renamed: the lower stretch is the lower portion of the remains Parana, then the Paraguay upstream from the confluence of the Paraguay and Parana. Then Cuiaba upstream from its confluence with the Paraguay, on up to the source.
2. The Angara, a tributary of the Yenisey river, in Russia was at a scale rank 2 while it’s parent was scale rank 4.
3. Upper section of the James River is the Cowpasture River.
4. South Branch of the Potomac, near its source, edited to add wiggle that matches National Atlas.
5. La Grand Riviere in Canada name fix.
6. RivNum 22874 renamed Pahsimeroi river
7. The Palouse river headwaters extended to Idaho
8. The Grand Ronde is likewise shorter than National Atlas suggests, starting a bit farther south than marked.
9. Similkameen river edited to match with the 10m Admin-1 vectors and branch off from the Okanogan at Oroville, WA, and then proceed west & north into Canada, where it remains.
10. Where the Snake River joins the Columbia River, part of the path of the Columbia was marked as the Snake.
11. Sweden river funk: ‘Dallven’ instead of the correct ‘Dalälven‘. A few others like that, need more clarification. via Graham Asher
12. IJssel river in Netherlands was incorrectly named Irrawaddy via Nathaniel

North America Rivers supplement

Database structure changes: Name1 is now Name, Name2 is now Name_alt Removed River, abbreviated Creek, North, South, East, West, Branch, etc. in the Name column to make consistent with the basic Rivers theme. Preserved the original in Name_full.

River changes in this release, Daniel Huffman unless otherwise noted:

7G6RWGPGTB, V8ZMBS28T4, T5JUWZ8UT6, 7G6RWGPGTB

1. River names in U.S. desert south west. via Daniel Huffman
2. The Marias River, a tributary of the Missouri in Montana, is listed as the “Marais” in the Natural Earth dataset.
3. Upper portion of the stream marked as the “Maury River” (tributary to the James in Virginia) is the Calfpasure River, which joins the Little Calfpasture River a bit southeast of Goshen to form the Maury.
4. Rivnum 23000 is the San Pedro River. The Natural Earth line appears to give a source just inside the US, but the National Atlas line has a source in Mexico.
5. Rivnum 22432 is San Cristobal Wash.
6. Rivnum 22467 is Centennial Wash
7. Rivnum 22474 is the Hassayampa River, headwaters extended north.
8. Rivnum 22435 is San Simon Creek.
9. Rivernum 22453 & 22997 appear to correspond to the Santa Cruz River. Renamed and extended headwaters south and cut the northern section so it drains to flats instead of the Gila river.
10. 22525 is Santa Maria River & Sycamore Creek
11. 22534 is Big Sandy River
12. 22550 is Trout Creek
13. 22676 is Meadow Valley Wash
14. 22533 is Carrizo Creek & Carrizo Wash
15. 22506 is Largo Creek
16. 22549 is Puerco River
17. 22596 is Chinle Creek & Chinle Wash
18. 22584 is Chaco River & Chaco Wash

Europe rivers supplement

Database structure changes: Name1 is now Name, Name2 is now Name_alt

Marine label areas

Now includes French names for most features. Corrections for Helodranon’ Antongila to Antongila Bay. Karskiye Vorota Strait looses Vorota as that already means Straight. W66SYEA9V1 via Olivier HENRY

Graticules

Graticules at 10m, 50m, 110m now have reasonable ScaleRank values.

Geographic Lines

Geographic lines at 10m, 50m, and 110m demotes the pre 1995 date line segment down to 100, giving Null Island company. Display column has been removed, Name column added with shorter version of the old Display name. Name_Long contains that former column, but renamed in keeping with current Natural Earth practices. Also, Abbrev column added for short names. Note now contains the “1995 Kiribati adjustment” and the like, including: “Any given day starts here and progresses west, with yesterday nipping at its heals.” And a FeatureClass column to bring into alignment with Natural Earth current practices.

Admin-0

South Sudan has been added as a new sovereign nation and redid it’s admin-1 (see below). The disputed area of Abyei remains a disputed polygon. Q7VBJ7XW76 via Alexander

Papua New Guinia and Panama in the 10m-admin-0 countries file are two countries once again.

Noted by: 4RDZ9J1R88 via Scott Zillmer JU6UJAXH2Lvia Charles Petersen 5BZUP2EYP6 via Friedrich Hartmann 6Y21U9Y7VA via Chris Chubb TZ44154J58 via Ilya Boyandin JT23E4D8QZvia Adam Drackley J7PWLS5M5U via John Loyd XGRGZJL4SB via Phillip Summers

The South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands were missing the words South Sandwich. UN9HD8TGPN and L68N24ZSMP via Chris Chubb

Sint Maarten is a adm_0 country via Nathaniel

Admin-0 maritime boundaries, 10m

Corrected the maritime boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. Tom

Admin-1 polygons and lines, 10m

Small portion of the Rhode Island/Massachusetts boundary was missing in the NEV databases. The portion in question was the part of Rhode Island that lies on the mainland, just east of the Sakonnet River and the city of Newport, and just south of Fall River, MA. GGXMDTGUMB via Scott Zillmer

All US state boundary fixes: Tom and Nathaniel

1. R.I.-Mass.
2. Va.-N.C. now bends south in the middle.
3. Del.-Penn. boundary bends differently.
4. Tenn.-Ala.-Ga.-Miss.
5. Kan.-Col.
6. Neb.-Co.
7. Neb.-Wy.
8. S.D.-Wy.
9. S.D.-Mont.
10. N.D.-Mont.
11. Iowa-Mo.
12. Modify the DC shape a bit to better match more detailed zooms and remove part of the adm-1 line on the shore.

Sudan and South Sudan edits (merging, splitting, renaming). Nathaniel

The ADM1NAME Ãstfold corrected to Østfold. Q9DMPA6XLN via andskog

Zhejiang – Should be labeled as the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Is part of Australia. RENAMED Niue – Is not part of Australia, but independent. Associated with New Zealand. DELETED as admin-1 units are not shown for small countries. Kerguelen Islands are part of France DELETED as admin-1 units are not shown for small countries. QNMYQYU9SS via Chris Chubb

Niassa Province in Mozambique is incorrectly spelled as ‘Nassa’. ‘Niassa’ is there as a varname, but the province has never been called ‘Nassa’. GYG4BWS5RB via Casey Ryan

Populated places (10m, 50m and 110m)

Norwegian cities, in whole related to the special characters æ, ø and å. The following corrections should be made: Baerum -> Bærum, Svolvaer -> Svolvær, Tonsberg -> Tønsberg and Vadso -> Vadsø. Q9DMPA6XLN via andskog

Baguio City in the Philippines is still the defacto summer location of the supreme court (judiciary branch of government), a similar situation as Chile and a couple other countries, but is now coded as “Admin-0 cap alt”. However, Quezon City and Pasay City are downgraded from Admin-0 capital alt to “Populated place” as the recent constitution states that the entire admin-1 unit of Manila is the national capital and they fall inside that feature. 17XS2A4GZ1 via Chris Chubb

The place name Wiener Neustadt in Austria (that is the proper name of the city) had the wrong NAME attribute “Wiener”. 3RDY2Y7B8Y via Alex Mayrhofer

Across the Mekong from Nakhon Phanom (Thailand), Natural Earth has a settlement marked “Khammouan” in Laos. Khammouan(e) is the name of a province. The actual city across the river appears to be the capital of said province, Thakhek. N2NH6V1U48 via Daniel Huffman

San Carlos moved east out of Lake Nicaragua.

Primarily in Iran, Egypt, and Lebanon. “Name in NEV” >> “Should be”: RBRUMXDUH6 via Scott Zillmer

1. Dayr az Zawr >> Dayr az Azwr
2. Khoramabad >> Khorramabad
3. Shahr E Kord >> Shar e Kord
4. Zagizig >> Zagazig
5. Damanhr >> Damanhur
6. Nabatiyet et Tahta >> Nabatiye et Tahta

Greeneville, NC should be Greenville, NC 5M22AZRSHG via Tim Stallmann

Two point features labeled Bayankhongor in Mongolia. Kept the ‘southern’ point, delete the northern one. Southern feature featureType changed to “Admin-1 cap”. HUYQG4MQWG via Joel Murray

Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso and Tom Patterson

Raster downloads are still á la carte for 10m and 50m resolutions.

GENERAL

Files continue to be published in GIS industry standard .shp shapefiles and .tif geotiff imagery in WGS84 “geographic” projection.

By the numbers: Almost 10 new files or packages have been introduced in this release. If specific descriptions are not provided below, you may assume version 1.3 edits relate to topology and extent (vector) or georeferencing (raster) and not content. That said, the majority of files (171 out of 197) have changed with minor to large edits in version 1.3. The version is indicated on each download page. More than three-quarters of the initial 1.0 files have changed collectively in this and the prior two updates. If a file has not changed, it retains it’s earlier version number.

A new Natural Earth quick start kit (158 mb) has been added to provided a small sample of the Natural Earth themes styled in an ArcMap .MXD document (read more at the Esri Mapping Center soon) and in a QGIS document.

OSGeo Live DVD now includes small sample of Natural Earth themes for use with open source GIS software like QGIS.

RASTER

Four new cross-blended hypsometric tints resolutions now offer merged ocean bottom data and hypsometric tints without relief shading to better allow you to mashup your own.

All TIFs are now GeoTIFs with projection and cell size, registration points baked in. Readme files have been added to all. A few files that had .tfw.txt are now just .tfw. A few corrupt header files have been fixed. The corrected files were silently updated a month or so ago.

VECTOR

Many but not all features at 10m scale have been clipped to ±180, ±90 bounding box. Some themes have also had their geometry repaired to make them easier to geoprocess and reproject. The goal is to make it easier to use Natural Earth in open source software that until those app’s import horizon expands.

Hydro:

Lakes: Added Puma Yumco lake in Tibet on the Chinese border with Bhutan: Y5EVSR84JU. Added a new Pluvial 10m lake theme for prehistoric water bodies starting with the Great Basin area of the United States and can grow to include more features as you send them in. Historic lakes include a more precise Aral Sea and now includes Lake Texcoco at Mexico City, circa 1500. ZT36PABLD9

Rivers: Modified river and lake center lines and scale ranks for 10m North America supplement and 10m Europe river supplement. The main 10m River files also received a couple edits. Address correction requests RL8SJ4XZE7 and 99SJ9ZYDBY. Specifically: Added the IJssel river in the Netherlands, corrected the Hollandsch Diep / Haringvliet / Volkerak in the Netherlands (initial version had 2 more or less parallel lines which actually are the north and south shore of a very wide river estuary). Also, FID 1114 / RiverNum 972 has been deleted in the Netherlands. Sacramento River in California has been adjusted at it’s mouth. Neighborhing Mokelumne River has been realigned to drain into the San Joaquin in the delta. St. Croix River on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota becomes the dominant feature rather than Namekagon River in the dissolved version.

Label areas:

Maritime label areas get corrections and many additions so all 50m ocean areas are now identified: WTXWNWSJ5B. The bulk of work adds small and medium sized insular waters in south east Asia, Antarctica, the Canadian Arctic, BC and Alaska, and southern Chile. Renamed water body in Netherlands: A6171Z89G6. Added Sargasso Sea around and east of Bermuda in North Atlantic Ocean. Added San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay in California. Added more detail in the Amazon delta. Added Columbia River and Yangtze River mouths.

Land label areas now clip North America, Europe, and Asia to 50 km to shoreline to promote more realistic auto labeling. The West Indies (Caribbean) and Central America no longer included in North America, scaleRank adjusted to view these sooner. Similar edits in Southeast Asia. New Region and Subregion columns added to account for discrepancies between labeling needs and geocoding needs (and to sidestep which “continent” breakdown to subscribe to). Also introduces concept of Oceania into the dataset. In the physical label areas for featureClass “ismus” is now “isthmus” and the “pen/cape” and “penn/cape” categories have been merged to “pen/cape” N71VZEYD8A. Several edge conditions along the ±180 line addressed. WARNING: There is an Easter egg in this theme, be aware! It has been coding as “here be dragons”. See admin-0 warning below.

Label points and elevation points: Moved Cape May USA-MD north and adjusted Cape Hatteras in USA-NC. Other random nips and tucks on XY alignment on other geography label points. In the featureClass for these,

Geographic lines: Added new Kiribati date line extension (and clipped to ±180 ±90 bounding box).

Parks: Two new U.S. National Park Service units added as the system expands to 384 total: President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site in Arkansas and River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Michigan. A new [Name] column has been added for easier map labeling at small scales. The existing [UnitName] continue to carry the official abbreviated name for labeling at large scales.

Populated places:

Fix handful of city issues in all scales. Brazil cities: YPP36NGZXJ California: PE2V7VALZZ. At some point would be nice to add another round of cities to get all “metropolitan” and “micropolitan” urban areas around the word. Some research has been done for North America and Europe. Please let Nathaniel know if you can help.

Administrative:

NOTE: There continues to be some confusion about the file structure. Most people will find the “countries” adm-0 file most useful. The other files are provided if you need conform to a different adm-0 coding to aggregate disputed areas (like Western Sahara) or surface other administrative regions (like England in the UK). There are less than 10 sovereignty’s around the world with dependencies or constituent countries. There are 187 other sovereign countries with no adm_0 subdivisions. There are 20 more countries that form subdivisions of the aforementioned sovereignties for a total of 207 countries and another 36 dependencies. (Please be aware that Natuaral Earth counts the de facto status of countries like Taiwan and Somaliland.) There are 9 disputed and/or indeterminate areas. There are 5 lease areas or other overlay for a total of 257 “top level” adm_0 features. Map units accommodate 50 subdivisions like England versus Wales that aren’t part of the standard schema but are commonly identified by ISO or other bodies. It is helpful to label parts of countries that are not contiguous and the map subunits make that possible.

New countries: The Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in October 2010 and two new countries (Sint Maarten and Curaçao) were created out of part of the former territory, with the remaining islands devolved back to Netherlands as top-level, overseas administrative units of that country. Aruba remains a country.

WARNING: A troubleshooting country has been added with an Indeterminate sovereignty class called Null Island (1, 2). It is a fictional, 1 meter square island located off Africa where the equator and prime meridian cross. Being centered at 0,0 (zero latitude, zero longitude) it is useful for flagging geocode failures which are routed to 0,0 by most mapping services. Aside: “Null Islands” exist for all local coordinate reference systems besides WGS84 like State Plane (and global if not using modern Greenwich prime meridian). Null Island in Natural Earth is scaleRank 100, indicating it should never be shown in mapping. Side note: Rank 30 (zoom 29 in Google speak) is 1:1 scale and would require over 288 billion million tiles with a total storage requirement of more than 3.5 billion million megabytes which verges on Borges’ essay On Exactitude in Science). Null Island should only be used during analysis and will keep errant points off your maps. A general rule of thumb in Natural Earth is to always limit your labels to the zoom that matches your current map scale (or one less for less dense labeling). Read more about web and print map scales at Esri Mapping Center (with the caveat that Natural Earth adds an extra rank 4 to get features at 1:50,000,000 scale, so Google’s 4 is our 5, counting from 0). To help with labeling, the version 1.2 [Name] column has been renamed [Adm0_name] in version 1.3 and the [Name_small] has been renamed [Name] and features like Null Island, Cyprus’s No Mans Land, Kashmir’s Siachen Glacier, and Korea’s No Man’s Land that should not be labeled at Natural Earth’s 1:10 million scale do not have a value. The new [Name] field should be auto detected in ArcMap.

New map units: New United Kingdom subdivisions for England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland in 110m to match the 50m and 10m versions. Map units continue to not receive lines in the 110m version to discourage that practice at small scales.

Looking forward: South Sudan remains a map unit of Sudan in this version. Assuming they declare independence, a 1.3.1 update will be released.

Pacific grouping lines adjusted to snap to 1° increments. The 110m version receives the same PacGroup column as the 50m version.

Tiny countries: Ascension island moved to correct location nearer Africa north of St. Helena from erroneous position on South Georgia I. in 50m and 110m files. Adm0_A3 codes adjusted and moved to their own self titled column.

Housekeeping: Changed – to _ in 10m_admin_0_scale_ranks_with_minor_islands. San Marino and Vatican were significantly misaligned with adm_1 features. China and Hong Kong boundary has been similarly fixed.  Added name diff columns between sov_adm0, adm0_units, and units_subunits. United Kingdom versus England. Helps with labeling compositing. Morocco gains a Western Sahara map unit division to allow easier reassignment into the more popular ISO geography coding (but remains part of the country of Morocco since it is de facto administered by that country; the strip of sovereign Western Sahara remains). Changed the scale rank on Belgium’s adm-0 regions to allow for better auto labeling.

Improvements: The 10m received the same attribute treatment as the 50m and 110m administrative themes received in prior versions. This fixes numerous name and coding issues (Gambia, The; Korea, North; bad Congos, etc). All scales now include Abbreviation and shorter “postal” codes to ease labeling. There is some indication provided when to alternate these based on labelRank and scaleRank. As your map gets more detailed, “postal” code labels should transition to abbreviations, then [Name], then the Adm0 level name at the most detailed scales. The updated attributes are also applied on updated 50m and 110m themes. In Sudan Abyei has removed from South Sudan adm_0 map units as that province has the right to join the South, but is not part of the South. Added alt names for Bonin Islands in Pacific Ocean, part of Japan; Ogasawara Island; Ogasawara Islands HNT3P6UXRJ, M7LLU3MUR8, 6Y5XZQGE1E List of administrative units has grown to 400 comprising subdivisions of existing Natural Earth countries into either nested administrative divisions or geographic areas for map labeling purposes.

Added and revised some adm-0 maritime indicator lines. Moved Aland land boundary line to maritime indicator (and added one between Aland and the mainland).

Adm-1 (states, provinces, etc):

NOTE: Subdivisions for small countries, especially those in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, remain absent from Natural Earth. If you’re using the adm_1 polygons to do point-in-poly detections, first run thru the adm_1 features and some points don’t have a match (or very near match), run those problem points against the adm_0 features to at least determine which country they geocode against.

All scales now include Abbreviation (US, Canada, partial UK) and shorter 2 to 3 digit “postal” codes to ease labeling (US, Canada, Mexico, Australia. Guessed at rest based on HASC/ISO codes, which themselves need more editing in the 10m version). There is some indication provided when to alternate these based on labelRank and scaleRank. Region coding has also been provided for UK and US, could expand in the future (address inconsistency in France and Italy in particular where Natural Earth continues to show admin 1 regions rather than departments).

States and provinces (both polygons and lines) now have correct ADM0_A3 codes and use the same MAP_COLOR column as the adm-0 in all scale sets. Due to popular demand, a new supplementary version of the adm_1 polygons are provided with large lakes erased (lakes scaleRank <= 2). GeoDB and SHP now added to download options. ZZ7DR1ZXAU

The 10m adm-1 file needs further edit on the names, geometries, and attributes, a never ending task since these geographies change year-to-year. We need more help in this area, please contact nathaniel [at] naturalearthdata [dot] com.

Some names and codes and splits have been made based on Jill the MapDiva’s help and our original research. Many thanks to her!

Added SameAsCity column to indicate if the label should be placed only at a certain natural scale since the adm-1 name is the same (or very similar) to the adm-1 capital populated place point label. It’s only as accurate as the populated places coding, so needs another round of edit. Added labelRank and changed scaleRank and dataRank to better conform to when to see polygon, when to see label, and what features to prioritize future edits and change detection. Added scale ranking to adm-1 lines so they can appear in tandem with the polys.

Countries with notable changes:

1. Algeria: Changed Biskra duplicate to El Qued.
2. Australia: Jervis Bay Territory split from Capitol Territory.
3. Bangladesh. Extra Barisal islands up by Dhaka merged with Dhaka prov.
4. Belgium: To only adm-1, had been mix of adm-2 and adm-3 as well (thanks Hans!).
5. Bhutan: Extra Pemagatsel merged with Samdrup Jongkhar (and slice off main Pemagatsel poly, too).
6. China: Gansu duplicate name changed to Qinghai.
7. Croatia: Polys merged. Herced Novi assumes the western lobe of Tivat duplicate.
8. Congo: Several changes.
9. Cyprus: removing western British base from Cyprus adm_1.
10. Denmark: Old version deleted, new added to conform to circa 2007 regions.
11. Djibouti: south duplicate Djibouti renamed Arta.
12. Ethiopia Addis Ababa holes fixed (assigned to multiple provinces).
13. Fiji: Extra Western renamed Northern.
14. Finland Ostrobothnia renames (2x)
15. Germany adjustments Z4BN7R9DU4. Merged two Bremen islands to one multi-poly. Offshore Helgoland to Schleswig-Holstein.
16. Golan in Israel (removed disputed UN administered area).
17. Guinea gets Conakry Kindia adm-1 line.
18. India: 2nd instance of Dadra and Nagar Haveli = Gujarat; 2nd instance of Kerala = extra island that could be combined with others. Daman & Diu was missing. Merged West Bengal duplicates.
19. Italy: Ponza island merged with Lazio region.
20. Ivory Coast: Removed Nimba poly. Removed tons of old adm-1 lines.
21. Japan: Name adjustments: 7MW5BGDGWA
22. Kuwait splits and merges.
23. Kyrgyzstan extra Bishkek is renamed Chuy.
24. Lebanon – North Lebanon and Beqaa get merged with large extra polys (a dup north and a dup Mt. Lebanon)
25. Macedonia’s Debarca receives name (was n.a.). Renamed northern “Southwestern” to Oslomej. Extra Dojran (2x) merged with parent and with Valandovo.
26. Malaysia: Negeri Sembilan islands in Selangor merged with main poly.
27. Mexico island from Baja to mainland (merged).
28. Netherlands to follow changed river alignment, and extended into IJsselmeer to match elsewhere (Hans). Corrected the border between Noord-Brabant and Zuid-Holland to match the corrected rivers. Corrected the border of Utrecht.
29. New Zealand: Tasman added (from dup Nelson). Extra Marlborough poly merged with main.
30. Nigeria: Ondo sliver (merged).
31. Northern Cyprus: Deleted all adm-1 as their names and alignment could not be confirmed.
32. Norway: two Oslo featuers merged.
33. Oman. Ash Sharqiyah gains portion of Al Wusta.
34. Pakistan: Sind sliver and 2nd poly merged with mainland.
35. Paupa New Guinea: Extra Central renamed National Capital District. Other mergers of dups.
36. Peru: Added Calleo (split from Lima Province, federal district). Clarified naming on the Lima adm-1 units (one is a province, one is a federal territory).
37. Philippines: Multiple mergers.
38. Poland: Two Pomeranian and two Warmian-Masurian merged together.
39. Russia: Kamchatka consumes an Arctic adm-1. Omsk islands in Tyumen merged to multipolygon. Adm-1 lines there fixed. Samara inside Orenburg fixed (and line). Ul’yanovsk inside Tatarstan (and line). Ryazan’ inside Mordovia (and line). Kostroma in Vologda (and line). Karelia sliver merged with parent.
40. Rwanda: Complete redo: 2GXAW4HQ1M
41. Saudi Arabia: Merged adjacent polys for Al Jawf.
42. Slovenia: Kozje, Krsko, Podcetrtek and Bistrica ob Sotli are remade.
43. Solomon Islands: Multiple splits, renames, and merges
44. Spain: Merged island in neighborhing prov back with Castile and Leon. Inholdings in Aragon / Foral de Navara.
45. Sri Lanka: Extra Colombo polys and adm-1 lines delt with.
46. Sudan: West Kordofan (was South. Kordofan). Adm changed on South Kordofan to SDN. 4NLED2STS2.
47. Sweden: Stockholm slivers that were Uppsala and Sodermanland recoded and merged with correct polygon. Removed old adm-1 lines in south portion of country. (Skane, Vasta Gotaland, etc).
48. Switzerland: Inholdings in Vaud of Fribourg
49. Tanzania: Extra adm_1 line removed in Mtwara
50. Tanzania: Morogoro duplicates merged, Arusha duplicate should be merged with Manyara (and connected by taking clip off Arusha)
51. Trinidad: “Tunapuna/Piarco” adm-1 inner island to Arima.
52. United Arab Emirates: Mergers and slivers, removing adm-1 lines.
53. United Kingdom: Fixed UK island Lundy Island to England admin (merge).
54. United Kingdom: Scotland: Merged dups for Moray (1 sliver), Perth and Kinross (sliver), East Lothian (several slivers to be merged with main poly), several with Scottish Borders.
55. Vanuatu: Extra Penama merged with Malampa.
56. Vietnam: 2nd Da Nang is Quang Nam; Quang Nam is Kon Tum. Merged a few polygons.
57. Yemen: Adds, resort: 4NLED2STS2. Also Adan and Abyan split.

Merge sliver polygons and island polys with their larger parent polygon:

1. Costa Rica
2. Croatia
3. Dominican Republic
4. El Salvador
5. Estonia
6. Greece
7. Haiti
8. Ireland
9. Nicaragua
10. Nigeria
11. Norway
12. Panama
13. Russia
14. Slovenia
15. Slovenia
16. Spain

Deletions on a country basis:

1. Cocos (Keeling) Islands polys as don’t conform with adm_0 threshold criteria for adm_1 subdivision. HBDVT5TDGG and EYGY3HQL86.
2. Northern Cyprus divisions, see note above.
3. Martinique and French Guiana arrondissements merged to form two separate integral regions of France. (They are still present in the data, but their country coding has change to France, and they no longer have sub-subdivisions.)

Added missing adm-1 lines:

1. Cyprus
2. Denmark
3. Germany
4. India
5. Israel
6. Mexico
7. Rwanda
8. Russia
9. Spain
10. Switzerland
11. Syria
12. Yemen

Removed adm-1 lines:

1. Guinea
2. Iraq: looses a couple extra adm-1 lines.
3. Martinique and French Guiana arrondissements
4. Nigeria: adm-1 lines removed from inside Federal Capital Territory.
5. Others

Added many adm-1 maritme indicators as new “Adm-1 boundary water indicator” feature class.

1. Croatia water indicator lines
2. Denmark
3. Netherlands: IJsselmeer extensions
4. Multiple other countries
5. Southeast Asia island nations (Indonesia and Philippines in particular) remain outstanding.

Adm-1 gaps: Closed a few inside polygon “donut holes” adm_1 lines that didn’t have coincidental start-end points:

1. Germany to Mongolia, Panama to Australia and Yemen. Ethiopia. Taiwan. Others.

Background: Cross-blended Hypsometric Tints offer a partial solution to a long-standing map reading problem: many people misidentify hypsometric tints (elevation colors) as vegetation or climate regions. Conventional hypsometric tints often show green in the lowlands, yellow in mid elevations, and red in the highlands. These map colors incorrectly suggest to the untutored that forests cover the parched Persian Gulf region and a hot desert climate prevails on the Greenland ice cap.

Cross-blended hypsometric tints instead use modified elevation colors for regions that people presumably associate with the natural environment. The Sahara is dusty brown, northern Russia is boreal forest green, the Mekong delta is jungle green, and Antarctica is icy blue-grey. As in nature, the map colors gradually blend into one another across regions (x and y axis) and from lowlands to highlands (z axis), hence the name cross-blended hypsometric tints. The legend above shows the map colors modulated by elevation and environment.

More about cross-blended hypsometric tints »

On the cultural front, North America gets roads and rails. General 10m detail roads and railroads come from the CEC North America Environmental Atlas. The supplementary roads are donated by XNR Productions and are at 1m scale, thanks Laura M. and Rob!

If you have data or time to contribute, especially to flesh out the new transportation and hydro themes, please contact me at nathaniel@naturalearthdata.com.

Note: We are not committing to building out supplementary level of detail in the rest of the world (we’re not THAT crazy!), but will incorporate such data if you contribute it. As always, we edit these data files but you should too before you publish maps using them. Feed us back corrections.

(below) Rivers and lakes in North America. On the left the version 1.1 hydro features. On the right in color are the new, supplemental version 1.2 hydro features, 4x the density of features at the same 10m linework generalization.

(below) Rivers and lakes in Europe. On the left the version 1.1 hydro features. On the right in color are the new, supplemental version 1.2 hydro features, 4x the density of features at the same 10m linework generalization.

(below) Highways (red and blue) and ferry routes in North America.

(below) Supplemental road detail in North America. Slightly different feature class scheme and data vintage.

(below) Railroads in North America.

• Download version 1.1 changed vector files (0 bytes) version 1.1.2

NOTE: Version 1.1.1 corrects the name of the 50m cultural “50m_admin_0_countries” file by adding the missing “r” (XQHSANQW71), updated March 15, 2010. Thanks Ben!

Thanks to over 50 contributors for making version 1.1 happen!

Tom, Dick, Craig, Jill, Landon, Preston, Nancy, Alfred, Brett, Annemarie, Hans, Martin, Kristin, Gene, Laris, Donatas, Kevin, Kurt, Tom, Xan, Bill, Ed, Uffe, Jochen, Christopher, Carlos, Barry, Alex, Victor, Kimi, Steve, daan, Maxb, Matt, Eugene, Damien, mizDannasag, Zoonseovasupem, Chris, Bjørn, Prof. Ward, Michael, Roy, Daniel, Kim, Gustav, Uwe, Geoff, Kumiko, Robert, Mike, Hugo, and Leo.

If you have a few hours to help, please check out the TODO listings below and email me at nathaniel@naturalearthdata.com.

Visitors: 123,000 page views since we launched in early December, 2009. Over 30,000 visits (20,000 unique) from 157 ISO countries, or 4.25 pages per visit. 65 percent are new visits. Visitors spend an average of 3 minutes 51 seconds on the site with a bounce rate less than 50 percent. Source: Google Analytics.

Downloads: 34,000. Three out of 4 downloads is ala cart, except for 10m cultural which is 1 out of every 2. Three out of every 4 downloads is for the 10m, with the rest split between 50m and the 110m.  Just less than 1 out of every 2 downloads is for the raster. Source: Download Manager.

CHANGE LOG THIS RELEASE:

Overall

• ADDED – National Parks for the United States of America.
• ADDED – Landscan urban polygons (masks for population extraction out of original LandScan data). Keep using the existing urban areas theme, this one is for research modeling only.
• REMOVED – admin 0 marine boundary lines. The indicator lines are still there.

More than 50% changes

• 10m, 50m, 110m Cities has new towns being added, 30m selection created, various corrections, now include geonames.org IDs, bounding boxes from the landscan data, and historical populations for 500 mega cities. As this triples the file size, a new “simple” version is also available with the updates, but not the full attributes.
• 50m and 110m Admin 0 and admin-1 get better country names and thematic codes, including slight reranking of some units and link out to the Correlates of War database (cShapes).
• 50m and 110m Admin 0 and admin-1 in 10m are rebuilt to fix coastline offset and overlaps and gaps between countries and state/province lines.
• 10m, 50m, 110m Geographic label points for peaks and summits. Now spun off into separate feature class.
• 110m country boundaries, missing countries, added missing mid-range islands. Includes Caspian sea and admin-0 scale ranks.
• All files names now use “_” underscore instead of “-” in filename for better compatibility with ArcMap.
• Handful of file name changes for consistency.

Less than 5% changes

• 10m Rivers and lakes. A couple names, fixed the scaleRanks to show as integers rather than strings.
• 10m, 50m Updated the geographic areas marine names (Indonesia straight).
• 10m, 50m Updated the geographic areas polys names (Seward Penn, Alaska).
• 10m coastline updates for Venice. Same for land and ocean.
• 10m bathymetry updates for several island mounts.
• 10m Antarctic ice shelves, now includes ice shelf names.
• 10m glaciated areas: names cleaned up, feature class column filled in.
• 10m, 50m, 110m WGS84 bounding box has more point to aid in reprojecting as a linearized curve.
• Fixed TWF extent on the raster imagery to improve import into popular open source GIS packages.
• 50m ocean can now project into web Mercator.
• 110m all cultural and most physical themes now inside the +/- 180, +/- 90bounding box.

TODO, spring 2010:

• Better thematic codes and names on admin-1 (about 50%, can someone help on the other 50%?)
• 10m Admin 0 and admin-1 get better country names and thematic codes, including slight reranking of some units and link out to the Correlates of War database (cShapes).
• 10m Admin 0 and admin-1 in 10m are rebuilt to fix coastline offset and overlaps and gaps between countries and state/province lines.
• 10m Coastline and land edits in 10m: Add in Greenland islands for towns. Remove several duplicate Pacific islands.
• 10m Admin-1 with clipped poly and lines for larger lakes. ZZ7DR1ZXAU
• Tribal areas in the US (US Census).
• US National Forests (CEC North American Atlas).
• More rivers in US, Mexico, and Canada; in Europe. Selection done, tapering in progress (CEC North American Atlas; European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environmental Sustainability). Will include minor updates to existing rank 0 to 8 rivers in terms of headwaters.
• More towns in US, Mexico, and Canada. Selection done, location research remains on ~200 (CEC North American Atlas)
• Roads – in US, Mexico, and Canada.
• ArcMap MXD / Layer file

TODO NEXT, fall 2010:

• Adding georeferenced manual shaded relief plates for select areas (US National Park Service).
• Possibly more from the gRoads project. Data source identified. (CEC North America Atlas, gRoads CIESEN)
• Urban areas – gain names, more towns get latLng bounding box, remove bad polygons, move some. Data source identified. (University of Madison, Wisconsin)
• Wetlands – polygons. Data source identified. (University of Madison, Wisconsin)
• Incorporate US physiographic regions from Matt Fox. Other refinements to the polys. Data source identified. (USGS)
• Add in alt names for more populated places using GeoNames ids.
• World protected areas (terrestrial, marine)

Other

• Are we missing a theme or have one to contribute? Please comment on this post!

After the jump, full listing of changes.

NOTE: This is NOT an exhaustive list of changes. It includes the publicly submitted Correction requests (and their tracking IDs) and the majority of other changes made by the authors. If you have a question about one of the changes listed (or missing), please comment on this post.

GENERAL File names:

• more consistency between the file names between the 10m, 50m, and 110m coverages: TNTYR1P4SL, E9ZGN9EMH4, 1B3PM884DW, AMMMVG69RD, Y3EA4YSVQV, GN7JQJ69PV, TXXQDW5L78, YLPMNZ245V
• All “-” characters in file names have been replaced with “_” characters.
• “with” has been removed from names that include “scale_rank” (rivers, etc).

Cities:

• 30m selection from 20m
• resort various other cities
• Better ranking and selection of of high latitude cities (Canada, Russia, etc)
• Lithuania “Panevezy” city (or “Panevėžys” in local form). TGGAGZGUYA
• Santa Cruz, Calif. not Monterrey WTPZZURTH2, PZRDHJ9Q8X
• Use better country names on the spatial join column (easy after the CountryNames.xls join)
• M7LLU3MUR8 Your populated places in Democratic Republic of Congo (COD) are all labeled as being in Congo Brazzaville, while those in Congo Brazzaville (COG) are labelled as being in Congo Kinshasa
• A9SAGXV9EE You have a populated place on the Rwanda side of the Rwanda/DRC border at the NE corner of Lake Kivu. The name is given as Goma, and the alternative name as Gisenyi. Country is given as Rwanda. Add Gisenyi as separate townspot. Adjust admin-1 and admin-0 bounds.
• Leo’s multiple Suggested corrections on populated places
• DP4NDPW57U St. John’s (FID 1233) is not classified as an Admin-1 capitol, when it should be.
• Fix corrupted diacritical marks: Here’s what happened to diacritics for “St. Mart??n Station” in Antarctica (south of Argentina). This looks like a disaster. UPDATE: There are only 16 possible corruptions. There are about 50 cities with diacritical marks now
• Places in Japan: 7MW5BGDGWA, PBPHDWS2BA, AWBXDMPRHA
• Latitude and longitude fields recalculated: A59N4GQ23S
• Names in Scandanavia: YJ31T7QTMU
• Mega cities historical population from the UN for 500+ cities. Edited to match existing NE places rather than using more generalized UN placement.
• Added missing mega cities, particularly in China and India, using GeoNames locations.
• Geoname IDs on bulk of towns. Use this link ID to gain local language names.
• Landscan matching bounding box extents on bulk of towns.

Admin-0 countries and details:

• Admin-0 names disagree between the 10m, 50m and 110m features.
• Use consistent column names.
• Includes link out to Correlates of War database.
• 8T5X3RXGQH, ZDPMVAX7G2, 9ZTTJYAZ33, HQJUJY6T1J
• Faroe (Faroese) islands moved up to same rank as Greenland. UML5P6LNM9
• Canary Island ranking: AXRUUBXY43

Physiographic (geography) label areas, points:

• Repositioned elevation points to to land on summits in the raster imagery.
• More summits have names.
• Added peaks from PeakBagger.com (country high points and more)
• Spun elevation points off into separate theme.
• Corrected location of Seward Peninsula in polys.

Graticules

• 10m, 50m, 110m WGS84 bounding box has more point to aid in reprojecting as a linearized curve.

Rasters:

• Now have correct extents, as of January (no change with this release): AAUNBU8H6D

10M SPECIFIC

Disputed areas:

• Kashmir: LLAHP8ZLGL, M286H8MVDP
• Golan Heights, etc.
• Overlays for Baikonur, Diego Garcia, etc.

Rivers:

• River attributes for Scale Ranks and stroke weight were string rather than int. TPYEMX98YT
• Dissolved rivers now preserves lake centerlines so they can avoid being labeled (removing conflict with lake labels).
• River Neris versus more important Nemuna (which is shown only from the Baltic sea to Kaunas). X6G88G56NS

Lakes:

• A lake south of Kaunas is actually an artificial reservoir made by damming Nemunas and called “Kauno marios” (Kaunas). It supports the largest hydroelectric power plant in Lithuania. 84871518GL
• Better sorted the US Great Lakes polygons: R6RL3M3TSE

Coastline, minor islands, and land:

• Added handful of Greenland islands (in later update)
• Removed Pacific duplicate island coastline (in later update)
• Two Venice islands (this update)

Marine areas:

• Straight and Sound abbreviations spelled out. Makassar Straight in Indonesia expanded. EPX5M6ERTB

Other 10m:

• 10m bathymetry updates for island mounts.
• 10m Antarctic ice shelves (most now named)
• 10m glaciated areas

Admin-1:

These  10m admin-1 updates will be pushed out in 1.2 update. If you need them now, contact nathaniel@naturalearthdata.com for a prerelease copy.

• Added more points along lines for smooth curves on projection of large polygons.
• Use improved admin-0 boundaries. Use improved coastlines. Remove overlap / gap between polygons.
• Recode some bad admin-0 column attributes. M7LLU3MUR8
• Rwanda redo: 2GXAW4HQ1M
• Congo and Yemen adds, resort 4NLED2STS2
• Germany adjustments Z4BN7R9DU4
• Name adjustments in Japan: 7MW5BGDGWA
• Admin-1 with clipped poly and lines for larger lakes. ZZ7DR1ZXAU

50m SPECIFIC

Ocean:

• Can now project ocean into Web Mercator: GP8LGY53RX

Marine areas (labels):

• Straight and Sound abbreviations spelled out. Makassar Straight in Indonesia expanded. EPX5M6ERTB

Populated Places

• Mega cities are now included.

110m SPECIFIC

Admin-0, Admin-1:

• Add missing countries of Kosovo and Montenegro missing. HZP3V4X1DH
• Duplicate consecutive points in North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. 89272PRVWP
• Add missing mid sized islands. MAP7RQQS86
• Adjust some boundaries.
• Now inside the true +/- 180, +/- 90 bounding box.
• Offer scale rank and dissolved version of the admin-0. 8T5X3RXGQH
• Lake Victoria boundaries. YLPMNZ245V
• Admin-0 file name now consistent with 10m and 50m. YLPMNZ245V
• Admin-1 poly and lines match adjusted coastlines

Populated Places:

• Regional capitals no longer appearing in the 110m populated places selection.

Coastline, Lakes:

• Missing Caspian Sea: J3ZRB2U8RU
• Coastline adjustments to match the land, admin-0, admin-1

The bad extent was throwing an error for some GIS systems on import and leaving gaps when reprojecting in the area of the international date line for others.

We’ve tested in ArcGIS 9.3.x in NSD Pro 5 georeferencing the rasters with the TFW files and reprojecting them. No funny gaps appeared at the 180th meridian. Thanks for edcorkery and user4815162342 in the Forums for first discovering this and Hans for the solution. Please let us know if you still experience reprojection problems.

Excerpted from Thematic Mapping Blog.

My holiday project, apart from skiing, was to play with the new Natural Earth dataset. By combing raster and vector data you can make a variety of visually pleasing maps. You can use my Natural Earth Browser to study the great linework of Natural Earth.

We’re hoping to have the first rounds of edits made before Christmas and then another update in early Spring 2010. Edits are primarily focused so far in the populated places (towns), admin-0 (countries), and physical features (point labels). The Spring update will include an overhaul of our admin-1 features with better coding for thematic mapping.

Do you have data to contribute or have time to review the existing data for errors? Great! Possible data for future updates include transportation (roads and railroads), time zones, and terrestrial hypsography. Please reference our guidelines about creating new data. If you have ideas for Natural Earth or want to show how you’re using the data in the map gallery, please drop us a line.

So far we’ve had about 7,000 visitors, over 30,000 pageviews, and about 9,000 downloads (both a la cart and combo meal) from 95 ISO countries around the world. Our average time on site of 4 minutes. Please keep it coming!