The National Elevation Dataset (NED) contains detailed elevation data for the United States and Territories. The NED comes in three different versions.
1 and 2 Arc-Second – This version has a resolution of approximately 30 meters (60 meters for Alaska) and covers all of the United States and Territories.
1/3 Arc-Second – This version has a resolution of approximately 10 meters and covers a large portion of the Continental US only. This is more detailed than the 1 and 2 Arc-Second version.
1/9 Arc-Second – This version has a resolution of approximately 3 meters and covers only a small area of the Continental US. This is the most detailed data and is obtained from laser radar (LIDAR). This elevation data is accurate enough to make out structures and road footprints.
More information regarding the three versions can be found here.
To access the NED data, simply open the file beneath the screenshots. Then select the version you want to view. You will need to manually navigate to the area of interest or you might get a red X on the screen. Also, some of the layers will not be visible if you are not zoomed in close enough to the Earth’s surface.
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Natural Resources Canada has created a digital topographic map for the entire country that can be viewed in Google Earth. The map is based on the WMS map service, which can be a little tricky to set up in Google Earth so I went ahead and set them all up. Just click on the link beneath the screenshot to access the maps.
The main map layer (Toporama) contains all 16 of the data layers. Most people will only need to use this layer. The farther you zoom in, the more detailed the map will become. The highest detail is based on the 1:30,000 CanVec database.
I have also included each layer individually in case you just want to pick and choose which data to view. Note that each layer has different view extents, so data may not be visible if you are not at the correct zoom level.
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The Norwegian Mapping Authority has created a series of maps covering Norway that can be viewed with Google Earth. The following map layers are included.
- Topographic Map (four different versions)
- Sea Territories Map
- Bathymetric Map
- Sea Charts
- Municipal Maps
- UTM Grid
- Administrative Divisions
- Vector maps for Europe
These maps are from a WMS server. Just click on the link below the screenshots to access in Google Earth.
Note that some of the maps only work at the city or street level. If you try to view them at a regional level, you will likely just see a screen of black. If that happens, just zoom in until the map becomes visible.
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Looks like a lot of people are using the Google Earth USGS Topographic maps. Couple updates that I thought I’d pass on.
First of all, I recompiled the index to be much easier to use. You no longer have to navigate through two index levels. Now, simply zoom down and the index will appear automatically as you navigate around the US. Click on one of the map outlines to open up a window with a button to download the map.
At the same time, the new index fixes a major bug that prevented many maps from loading. You should now be able to view all of the maps south of 48 latitude. If you find one that doesn’t work, please let me know so I can fix it. I hope to have the remaining maps north of 47 latitude done by next month. When done, this collection will have about 55,000 maps (~150 gigabytes) available to view in Google Earth. I’m also going to try to add Alaska.
Several people have asked about Canadian Topo Maps. I have been downloading them and I could add them to the collection. But I think those will be another 200-300 gigabytes, and I don’t want to push my luck with my web host. So that project is on hold until I figure out a way to host them. If you happen to have a 200-300 gigabytes of server space laying around and want to help out please contact me.
I have also added some instructions on the Google Earth USGS Topographic maps page to show you how these topographic maps can very easily be embedded on your own web page or blog using the Google Earth Browser Plugin.
Lastly, I am still working on my Historic Topographic Map collection. I know there are some maps in that collection that are broken. The update I’m working on will fix those and probably double or triple the number of historic topo maps in the collection. Sorry, but no time frame on when that will roll out. The historic maps are a lot more work than the current maps.
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This overlay contains seamless topographic/land cover data for the entire Earth and a USGS Topographic Map overlay for the entire US, including Alaska and Hawaii.
Different map scales automatically load as you zoom in with the most detailed maps being available for the US. Hill shading has been added to the maps giving them a 3D appearance.
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The SRTM KML Project will overlay a shaded relief map of the Earth based on elevation data from the Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). Data covers the entire Earth.
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This collection contains approximately 900 15-minute historic USGS Topographic Maps covering almost the entire states of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. Most of the maps are dated between 1890 and 1910.
There is a long history to these maps and how they ended up on my server and the role I played is but a very small one. My understanding of the story is that Christopher Marshall took a laptop and a scanner to various libraries and created the original scans, which consisted of 4 scans for the four corners of each map. JPGs from the original scans can be downloaded from http://historical.maptech.com/ and http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm. The next chapter to the story occurred a few years ago when Richard Utter took about 900 of the maps, stitched together the four pieces of each map and georeferenced them. Then finally, last week I received an email from Russell Nelson saying that he had all of Richard’s georeferenced maps on a couple DVDs and that he would be happy to send them to me. Now here we are a few days later and I have converted all of them to Google Earth SuperOverlays and uploaded them to my server. So I would like to personally thank Christopher, Richard and Russell for their contributions in making this possible.
This collection does not have all the topo maps that are available from the University of New Hampshire and Maptech websites. Richard appears to have scanned one revision of each 15′ map. Maybe someday I will find the time to add multiple revisions and the maps that are available in other scales. But that’s an enormous undertaking so probably won’t happen any time soon. Because there is only a single version of each map, I went ahead and removed the collars to create a seamless overlay for each state.
This collection has been added to my main Historical Topographic Map collection that has 1,000+ other historical topos. If you already have that Network Link in your Google Earth Places folder, then you should see the New England Maps appear automatically. If you don’t have it, simply download the KML file at the bottom of this post. Choose a state, and then zoom down close enough for the maps to appear (the point where about 9 maps at a time will be within view). It may take a few seconds for the map tiles to load, especially when you first select PA or NY or have a slow Internet connection. An index is provided which shows the name and date of the map. If a map appears to be missing, see if it’s associated with the adjacent state. There are a few missing, especially in northern Maine.
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Categories: Topographic Maps Tags: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New England, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Topographic, Vermont
