Land Polygons

Polygons for all land areas in the world, ie. continents and islands. Optionally, large polygons are split into smaller overlapping chunks that are easier and faster to work with.

Description

The data has been derived from OpenStreetMap ways tagged with natural=coastline. Ways are assembled into polygons and then split. Some errors in the OSM data are repaired in the process.

Where polygons have been split they overlap slightly to help avoiding rendering artefacts at the seams.

This data contains all the detail available in OSM. For small scale maps (small zoom levels) it might be too detailed and therefore slow to use. In this case consider using Natural Earth Data instead.

Variants

  • Large polygons are available as complete polygons or split into smaller polygons.
  • The data is available in WGS84 and Mercator projection.

See Also

Water Polygons · Coastlines

Download

Download
322 MB		 Format: Shapefile, Projection: WGS84, Last update: 2013-05-18 07:06
(Large polygons not split)
Download
327 MB		 Format: Shapefile, Projection: WGS84, Last update: 2013-05-18 07:06
(Large polygons are split, use for larger scales)
Download
345 MB		 Format: Shapefile, Projection: Mercator, Last update: 2013-05-18 07:07
(Large polygons not split)
Download
350 MB		 Format: Shapefile, Projection: Mercator, Last update: 2013-05-18 07:08
(Large polygons are split, use for larger zoom levels)
Download
23 MB		 Format: Shapefile, Projection: Mercator, Last update: 2013-05-18 07:07
(Large simplified polygons not split, use for zoom level 0-9)

License

Data is copyright OpenStreetMap contributors and available under the ODbL. More...

Notes

The coastline in OpenStreetMap is often broken. The update process will try to repair it, but this does not always work. If the OSM data can't be repaired automatically, the data here will not be updated.

This data is generated with OSMCoastline. This program has many options to tweak its output. If the data you are getting here is not quite the right thing, try running the program yourself with different options.