Natural Earth Vector Versions Save

A global, public domain map dataset available at three scales and featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data.

v5.1.2

1 year ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

GENERAL

  1. Add missing TLC point-of-view to ne_50m_admin_0_boundary_lines_disputed_areas theme.
  2. Spelling of Londonderry/Derry populated place.

v5.1.1

1 year ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

  • Many thanks to @mbloch for help with debugging Mapshaper <> PostGIS compatibility

GENERAL

  1. Ensure "empty" text fields have minimum length of 1 char for PostGIS compatibility. As the housekeeping DBFs are joined with the Mapshaper cracked features, the 5.y.z series would produce zero length text fields, which are valid but are incompatible with PostGIS. A new version of Mapshaper, used here, now produces a minimum of 1 char text length fields even if all column values are empty. Fixes #674

v5.1.0

1 year ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

  • Many thanks to @jeffdefacto for help with disputed boundaries research

GENERAL

  1. Add top-level-country (TLC) point-of-view (POV) with shapefile, cleanup the existing ISO POV, add shapefile export for ISO point-of-view, and bug fix polish for alternate points-of-view added in v5.0.0 and v5.0.1.

v5.0.1

2 years ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

  • Many thanks to @jeffdefacto for help with disputed boundaries research

GENERAL

  1. Bug fix polish for alternate points-of-view (POV) added in v5.0.0 release.

v5.0.0

2 years ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

  • Many thanks to @zerebubuth for help with disputed boundaries prototyping in Tilezen.
  • Many thanks to @elliotap, @jwva, and @mizmay for research and editing of populated places and other themes.
  • Many thanks to @imresamu who continues to help with localization and Wikidata IDs.
  • Many thanks to Mapdiva for contributing new admin-2 counties for United States.

GENERAL

  1. Adds support for alternate points of view in admin-0 related themes with fclass_* properties (like fclass_iso). The following country and international organizations worldviews are supported: Argentina (ar), Bangladesh (bd), Brazil (br), China (cn), Egypt (eg), France (fr), Germany (de), Greece (gr), India (in), Indonesia (id), Israel (il), Italy (it), Japan (jp), South Korea (ko), Morocco (ma), Nepal (np), Netherlands (nl), Pakistan (pk), Palestine (ps), Poland (pl), Portugal (pt), Russia (ru), Saudi Arabia (sa), South Korea (ko), Spain (es), Sweden (se), Taiwan (tw), Turkey (tr), United Kingdom (gb), United States (us), Vietnam (vn), and ISO (iso). Fixes #301
  2. Provides easy alternate download of ne_10m_admin_0_countries themes preassembled for the 31 different viewpoints, like ne_10m_admin_0_countries_arg for Argentina. Full list of countries: Argentina (arg), Bangladesh (bdg), Brazil (bra), China (chn), Germany (deu), Egypt (egy), Spain (esp), France (fra), United Kingdom (gbr), Greece (grc), Indonesia (idn), India (ind), Israel (isr), Italy (ita), Japan (jpn), South Korea (kor), Morocco (mar), Nepal (nep), Netherlands (nld), Pakistan (pak), Poland (pol), Portugal (prt), Palestine (pse), Russia (rus), Saudi Arabia (sau), Sweden (swe), Turkey (tur), Taiwan (twn), Ukraine (ukr), United States (usa), and Vietnam (vnm). Does not include ISO. Fixes #301
  3. Expands the name localization added in v4.1 to 26 languages (up from 21 in format name_*) by adding Farsi (fa), Hebrew (he), Ukrainian (uk), Urdu (ur); and distinguishing between original Simplified Chinese (zh) and new Traditional Chinese (zht). Localized names in the original 21 languages have also been updated. Fixes #302, #303, #399, #451, #533
  4. Renames admin-0 Macedonia features to North Macedonia to keep up with current events. Fixes #290.
  5. Renames admin-0 Swaziland features to Eswatini to keep up with current events. Fixes #410.

v4.1.0

5 years ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

Many thanks to @imresamu for name translations and Wikidata concordances, @mattbloch for MapShaper feature development, and hat tips to @planemad for Wikidata concordances, Mapbox generally for leading the way with Wikidata name translations, and @thisisaaronland for ne_id work with Brooklyn Integers. Also to @randymeech and @bcamper at Mapzen (RIP) for sponsoring this work as a parting gift to the geo family.

GENERAL

  1. Expands the name localization added in v4.0 to 21 languages (up from 7) and several dozen themes expanding from populated places to include all admin-0, admin-1, rivers, lakes, playas, geographic lines, physical labels, parks, airports, ports, and more. As part of this work a new unique and stable "ne_id" has been added for any feature with a name translation &/or a Wikidata ID concordance. The full list of languages is: name_ar, name_bn, name_de, name_en, name_es, name_fr, name_el, name_hi, name_hu, name_id, name_it, name_ja, name_ko, name_nl, name_pl, name_pt, name_ru, name_sv, name_tr, name_vi, and name_zh. (Names with * indicate new language in v4.1 series.) A 2-character language code decoder ring is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes. Props to Wikidata for their CC0 license: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction.
  2. Fixes admin-0 polygons for for Bosnia & Herzegovina to restore the Republic Srpska and the Brcko District condominium.
  3. Renames admin-0 Swaziland features to eSwatini to keep up with current events.
  4. Fixes physical label polygons to restore full geometries.
  5. Switches to MapShaper for topology building and joining of attributes for all administrative themes and 10m land and ocean themes. Some shapes were adjusted to fit new snapping tolerances.

v4.0.0

6 years ago

See CHANGELOG for full details. Here's a quick summary:

  1. The v4 series introduces significant changes to admin-0 country shapes to account for the disputed area of Crimea, and several important admin-0 country name changes like Czechia renamed from Czech Republic. Admin-0 population and GDP values have also been updated to 2016/2017 vintage (primarily from CIA World Factbook).
  2. The v4 series introduces web map optimized min_zoom, min_label, and max_label properties that compliment the existing scalerank property that was originally curated for print cartography in proper projection glory. The min_zoom property is optimized for the web Mercator projection we are collectively hallucinating, and the min_label and max_label properties are optional on some themes when the label should be displayed later than the feature's geometry (or should stop showing). Fixes: #200, #202.
  3. While the v3 series went full UTF-8 unicode (character encoding) language support a few errors were made along the way. v4 fixes bad Windows-1252 to UTF-8 conversion bugs. We also better document with the character encoding by adding a .cpg file to shapefile, and on the Natural Earth website documentation. Fixes #89, #186, 4RUN1M5S75; thanks Jeremy and @pnorman.
  4. More names in more languages! We added French names for marine areas way back in v1.4.0, and v4 adds many thousand more for populated places in the following languages: name_en, name_de, name_es, name_fr, name_pt, name_ru, name_zh. The existing name, name_alt, and nameascii fields have been updated, and name features over 600 labels with accent marks (versus the 80 or so that were garbled in the v3 series).

v3.3.0

7 years ago