Skip to main content

World Natural Earth Dataset Usage Example

Natural Earth is a public-domain map dataset designed primarily for cartography and visualization rather than high-precision GIS analysis, available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales.

Data download site: Natural Earth - Free vector and raster map data at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales

Key Information
PositioningFree, public-domain global basemap material, designed primarily for cartography and visualization rather than high-precision GIS analysis (GIS Geography)
ScalesThree sets of data with the same themes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales, used to keep visual appearance consistent across multiple zoom levels (GIS Geography)
CategoriesCultural: country/province boundaries, cities, roads, airports, railways, ports, disputed areas, and more. Physical: land, rivers, lakes, peaks, coastlines, marine landforms, vegetation zones, and more. Raster: base textures (Natural Earth 1/2), shaded relief, ocean bottom relief, cross-blended hypsometric tints, and more (GIS Geography)
Data FormatsEach theme is packaged as an ESRI Shapefile, and rasters are provided as GeoTIFF. The official site also provides a Quick-start kit with QGIS/ArcMap styles for out-of-the-box use (naturalearthdata.com)
LicenseFully public domain; the data can be freely copied, modified, and used commercially. The authors recommend retaining source attribution (GIS Geography)
MaintainersJointly maintained by a volunteer community and NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society). Core contributors include Nathaniel V. Kelso and Tom Patterson.

Download Data​

Load Data​

Upload Data

After decompressing the downloaded data, upload it to the cloud resource manager. iXGIS will recognize the vector data format and prompt you to import the data as the default pgv format or keep the existing shp format.

Load Data

Select the newly uploaded ne_10m_time_zones.pgv data. The resource manager's dynamic toolbar will show available actions such as Download, Delete, Load, and Rename. Choose Load to load the data into the current project.

After the data is loaded:

Coloring

Click the menu button on the layer, select symbol settings, and use unique-value coloring. Use mapcolor as the classification field and choose any color scheme.

Essential Notes​

When using Natural Earth or other vector datasets that include China's borders, special care is required. In general, except for Download countries (China POV) (4.68 MB) version 5.1.1, other vector datasets contain multiple compilation errors in China's borders. Typical examples include Nangkarze County, Lhozhag County, Cuona City, and Medog County.

Use the 1:1,000,000 public-version vector data of China to replace China-region data from these foreign sources. The simplest method is to use the clipping tool to directly remove the China portion from the Natural Earth data, then replace it with the correct data.

Processing Workflow​

  1. Delete features such as china and Hong Kong from the global vector data.

  2. Use China's land-area polygon vector data to erase the global vector data. Open the GIS tool from Toolbox - Analysis Tools - Overlay Analysis - Erase.

  3. Merge the erased global vector data with the China land-area polygon vector data used above. Use GIS Toolbox - Analysis Tools - Overlay Analysis - Union to union the two files.