Do you find locating base maps and elevation data an elusive and daunting task? If you create maps and models, you have probably struggled with this from timetotime. Acquiring data and grid files for use in your projects can be difficult since there are so many websites and servers to choose from! Where do you even begin?

In this webinar you'll learn to apply various approaches to locate base map files, download imagery, and acquire terrain data from different online resources such as the USGS National Map Viewer, WFS servers, OSM servers, and WMS servers.

While Surfer is featured in this video, these links provide base map data that can also be used in MapViewer!

Links to the websites covered:

Diva GIS: is particularly useful for mapping and analyzing biodiversity data, such as the distribution of species, or other 'pointdistributions'. It reads and write standard data formats such as ESRI shapefiles, so interoperability is not a problem. DIVAGIS runs on Windows only.
Natural Earth Data: Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1 : 10m, 1 : 50m, and 1 : 110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, wellcrafted maps with cartography or GIS software.
National Map: (US Data only) Topo maps historical and current.
Open Topo: HighResolution Topography Data and Tools.