Get the full scoop at [NaturalEarthData.com](http://naturalearthdata.com) _No, really! This readme is a poor substitute for the live site._ #About Natural Earth Vector Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector (here) and raster data ([over there](https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-raster)), with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software. Natural Earth was built through a collaboration of many [volunteers](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/contributors/) and is supported by [NACIS](http://www.nacis.org/) (North American Cartographic Information Society), and is free for use in any type of project (see our [Terms of Use](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/) page for more information). [Get the Data ยป](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads) ![Convenience](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/home_image_11.png) #Convenience Natural Earth solves a problem: finding suitable data for making small-scale maps. In a time when the web is awash in geospatial data, cartographers are forced to waste time sifting through confusing tangles of poorly attributed data to make clean, legible maps. Because your time is valuable, Natural Earth data comes ready-to-use. ![Neatness Counts](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/home_image_21.png) #Neatness Counts The carefully generalized linework maintains consistent, recognizable geographic shapes at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Natural Earth was built from the ground up so you will find that all data layers align precisely with one another. For example, where rivers and country borders are one and the same, the lines are coincident. ![GIS Atributes](http://www.naturalearthdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/home_image_32.png) #GIS Attributes Natural Earth, however, is more than just a collection of pretty lines. The data attributes are equally important for mapmaking. Most data contain embedded feature names, which are ranked by relative importance. Other attributes facilitate faster map production, such as width attributes assigned to river segments for creating tapers. #Versioning 2012 and the 2.0 release mark the project's shift from so-called marketing versions to [semantic versioning](http://semver.org/). Natural Earth is a big project with hundreds of files that depend on each other and the total weighs in at several gigabytes. SemVer is a simple set of rules and requirements around version numbers. For our project, the data layout is the API. * Version format of X.Y.Z (Major.Minor.Patch). * When we change existing data file names or column names (thus breaking your data links), the X major version X.y.z will be incremented. * When we introduce significatnt new content, major version X will be incremented. * Bug fixes not affecting the API increment the patch version Z will be incremented. * Backwards compatible API additions/changes increment the minor version Y * Backwards incompatible API changes increment the major version X. Under this scheme, version numbers and the way they change convey meaning about the underlying code and what has been modified from one version to the next. #&etc Natural Earth is maintained by Nathaneiel V. KELSO (@nvkelso) and Tom Patterson. The project transitioned to Github in 2012. Versioned files are here to collaborate around. The frontend still lives at NaturalEarthData.com.