MapMaker

MapMaker provides access to high-quality world maps provided by Natural Earth. Regions within world maps can be selected and cropped in order to create georeferenced maps specific to a given data set. These maps consist of the map data in a TIF file and georeferencing information in a TFW world file. These files must be kept together for use in GenGIS or any other GIS program.

At the native resolution of the Natural Earth maps, GenGIS can handle continent-sized maps on most systems. If you wish to use a larger map or if you are running older hardware, you may need to subsample the map. Functionality for subsampling is provided within MapMaker.

If you wish to have a 3D map of your sample site, follow the instruction on obtaining digital terrain maps (DEMs) provided on the Tutorials page.

Provided maps

Different Natural Earth world maps can be selected using the radio buttons at the bottom of the page. The included maps are:

• Hypsometric Tints: shaded relief combined with custom elevation colors based on climate — humid lowlands are green and arid lowlands brown.
• Natural Earth 1: satellite-derived land cover data and shaded relief presented with a light, natural palette suitable for making thematic and reference maps.
• Natural Earth 2: data derived from Natural Earth 1 portraying the world environment in an idealized manner with little human influence.

Subsampled maps of the entire world suitable for use in GenGIS are provided in the MapMaker\WorldMaps directory.

Download

Maps produced by MapMaker are compatible with GenGIS version 1.06 or higher.

• Download MapMaker v1.0 for Windows XP/Vista/7 (~600MB).