Global datasets

Raster data

Blue Marble imagery

NASA's Blue Marble is a 500m-8 degree per-cell world wide visual image of the Earth from space, with the clouds removed.

• see the Blue Marble wiki page

ETOPO

The ETOPO datasets provide global topography and bathymetry at 1', 2', and 5' per-cell resolutions.

ETOPO1

• http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/

The cell registered version can be loaded directly into a lat/lon region. GRASS raster data is cell registered (see the GRASS raster semantics page)

The grid registered version must be loaded into a simple XY location using the parameters found in the .hdr file, and needs to have the 90deg N,S rows cropped away:

# create a new simple XY location and mapset

# Import grid registered binary float
r.in.bin -f in=etopo1_bed_g.flt out=etopo1_bed_g \
   n=90.008333333335 s=-90.008333333335 e=180.00833333334 \
   w=-180.00833333334 rows=10801 cols=21601 anull=-9999
r.colors out=etopo1_bed_g color=etopo2

# reduce region by 1 cell
g.region rast=etopo1_bed_g
eval `g.region -g`
g.region n=n-$nsres s=s+$nsres e=e-$ewres -p

# save smaller raster and remove original
r.mapcalc "etopo1_bed_g.crop = etopo1_bed_g"
g.remove etopo1_bed_g

# change the location to lat/lon by restarting GRASS
#  in the PERMANENT mapset and running g.setproj
#  or move the entire mapset into a lat/lon location
#  and manually edit the $MAPSET/cellhd/ files (dirty!)

ETOPO2

• See the ETOPO2 (2' global) article by M.H. Bowman in the GRASS Newsletter, 1:8-11, August 2004.

ETOPO2v2 data download

GEBCO

• The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans

http://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/

Miscellaneous

• Some datasource links: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~ben/gmt.html

• The r.in.gdal modules may be used to import data of many formats, including GMT netCDF
• The r.in.bin module may be used to import raw binary files

LANDSAT

Since October 1, 2008 all Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes held in the USGS EROS archive are available for download at no charge.

• Download via the Glovis online search tool (req. Java)
• Download via the USGS's EarthExplorer interface

Modules

• r.in.gdal - Main import tool for complete multiband scenes
• r.in.wms - Download data covering current map region via WMS server
• r.in.onearth - WMS frontend for NASA's OnEarth Global Landsat Mosaic
• i.landsat.rgb - Color balancing/enhancement tool

MODIS

• see the MODIS wiki page

Pathfinder AVHRR SST

• see the MODIS#Pathfinder_SST wiki page

merge that info here?

QuickBird

• Wikipedia's QuickBird entry

• Import with the r.in.gdal module

SeaWiFS

• see the MODIS#SeaWiFS wiki page

merge that info here?

Smith and Sandwell

• Merge info here from the Marine Science wiki page

SRTM

• see the r.in.srtm module

Vector data

GSHHS World Coastline

GSHHS is a high resolution shoreline dataset. It is derived from data in the public domain and licensed as GPL. The shorelines are constructed entirely from hierarchically arranged closed polygons. It is closely linked to the GMT project.

• Download data from http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/wessel/gshhs/gshhs.html
• Import with the v.in.gshhs module for GRASS 5 (perhaps needs to be updated to the latest version of the GSHHS format?)

how for GRASS 6?

• Download data from NOAA's shoreline extractor site. Version 1.3 is available for download as shapefiles (but this is some years old, the dataset is now up to version 1.10)

For GRASS 6 you can download 1:250,000 shoreline data from NOAA's site in Mapgen format, which can be imported with the v.in.mapgen module.

VMap0

1:1 million vector data. Formerly known as Digital Chart of the World

• see the two articles in GRASS Newsletter vol. 3 (June 2005)