Natural Earth: 10m Vector |
Version 2.0.0
Natural Earth is a public domain, world-wide dataset available in vector and raster formats. Vector data are available in three scales (1:10, 1:50, and 1:110 million) and the full set of rasters can be accessed here.
This scale, 1:10 million, is suitable for displaying the world on a large wall poster. On a typical web-map, it works best at scales 4-6, though some layers, such as roads, work well at still larger scales. The preview tiles above go to zoom-level 9, but the detailed North American road layers is best viewed at zoom-level 10 in some cities, as is shown in the image of Los Angeles below.
Los Angeles at zoom-level 10
The listing includes all 85 Cultural and Physical Vectors available at the 1:10m scale, such as boundaries, populated places, rivers, railroads, and more. Within our layer selection window, these datasets have been grouped into 26 thematic layers. For example, the “10m populated places” layer includes two shapefiles: ne_10m_populated_places.shp and ne_10m_populated_places_simple.shp. All layers are comprised of well-chosen features with names and scale ranks for hierarchical labeling; this makes Natural Earth a favorite with cartographers.
The airports and harbors in the preview tiles are symbolized with Maki Icons. Thanks, MapBox!
For a more thorough description of the data, visit the Natural Earth features page.
