{"id":120921,"date":"2011-09-21T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/uncategorized\/using-etopo1-data\/"},"modified":"2019-10-25T15:40:14","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T22:40:14","slug":"using-etopo1-data","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/product\/mapping\/using-etopo1-data","title":{"rendered":"Using ETOPO1 data"},"author":4331,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[22941],"tags":[38211,23211,31301],"industry":[],"product":[],"class_list":["post-120921","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","tag-arcgis-methods","tag-map-data","tag-symbology"],"acf":{"short_description":"By Aileen Buckley, Mapping Center Lead\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn a previous blog entry called \"Using the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolutio...","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

By Aileen Buckley, Mapping Center Lead<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ETOPO1<\/p>\n

In a previous blog entry called “Using the Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database<\/a>“, we described a detailed and useful worldwide dataset — the GSHHS dataset that provides global coverage at five levels of generalization for oceans\/land, lakes, islands in lakes, and ponds on islands in lakes.<\/p>\n

In this blog entry, we describe another really great global dataset — the ETOPO1 Global Relief Model<\/a>. At last year\u2019s Esri International Users Conference<\/a> in the “Making Beautiful Maps<\/a>” technical session presentation, which you can download from our Other Resources page<\/a>, we demonstrated how well these two data sets work together. Both were used in the World Elevation (figure 1) and World Landform maps, as well as the Pacific Northwest map.<\/p>\n

\"ETOPO1
Figure 1. The World Elevation map created using ETOPO1 data<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ETOPO1<\/a> is a dataset that was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA<\/a>) in 2009. It’s a 1 arc-minute global digital elevation model (DEM) of the Earth’s surface that includes both land topography and ocean bathymetry. An arc-minute is equal to one sixtieth of a degree which results in a grid cell resolution of about 1.8 km. This is a higher resolution dataset than the older ETOPO2 (about 3.7 km) and ETOPO5 (about 9.3 km) data sets. There are two versions of ETOPO1 data: “Ice Surface” (which includes the elevation at the top of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) and “Bedrock” (elevation at the base of the ice sheets). You can see the differences between these if you examine the ice covered areas of Greenland in the images below.<\/p>\n

\"ETOPO1
Figure 2a. The ETOPO1 Ice data set<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"ETOPO1
Figure 2b. The ETOPO1 Bedrock data set<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Below, I’ve outlined the steps I used to download the data from NOAA and process it for use in ArcMap:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Go to the ETOPO1 Web site (http:\/\/www.ngdc.noaa.gov\/mgg\/global\/global.html<\/a>).<\/li>\n
  2. If you want the ice surface data, save the following file to a directory on your computer and then unzip it:\n