Where should you get your data?

There are a variety of sources for administrative boundary data.

GADM: Can provide very detailed national, state, and county boundaries.  Only downloads one country at a time.

Natural Earth Data: Less detailed boundaries than GADM or ESRI, so the map will look less busy for a large-scale project.

ESRI Maps: Very detailed boundaries; the easiest maps to import if you are in the lab.  If you do not have access to the O drive, the online maps are slow to load and freeze frequently.  ESRI maps cannot be used for commercial purposes. 

Obtaining Administrative Boundaries

Global Administrative Area

Download national, state, and county boundaries for an individual country.

  1. Visit http://www.gadm.org/
  2. Click the Data tab.
  3. Under "GADM data," click on the word link country.
  4. Under "Country," select your country of interest
  5. Click Shapefile. A Zip file should automatically download.
  6. Note: This map will contain 3 feature classes:
    _adm0: National Boundary
    _adm1: State Boundary
    _adm2: County Boundary

Natural Earth Data

Download all Countries or States & Territories worldwide.

  1. Visit http://www.naturalearthdata.com/
  2. Click the Downloads tab.
  3. Under "Large Scale Data," select Cultural.
  4. Click Download Countries or Download States and Provinces, depending on the scope of your project.

ESRI Data

 All country boundaries worldwide.  These maps are copyrighted and cannot be used for commercial purposes.

These maps can be downloaded, but are already saved on GDC computers if you are in the lab.  The maps downloaded from online can take a very long time to load, so it's recommended to use the pre-downloaded file if you're in the lab.

To import the maps saved on the GDC drive:

  1. Open ArcGIS.
  2. In the Catalog tab on the right of the screen, click the connect to folder button. 
  3. Copy this into the Folder menu: O:\Cataloged\Esri\DataMaps101\world\data\
  4. Click OK.
  5. Click the + next to the newly connected folder. 
  6. Scroll down to Country.sdc (Or continent, region, or admin depending on your needs). Drag this file into the workspace.
  7. If you only need specific countries/boundaries, right click on the layer and click Open Attribute Table. Select the countries/territories you need.  Close the attribute table. 
    -If you are studying the whole world, skip this step.
  8. Right-click on the layer.  Select Data, then Export Data...
  9. Rename your output and save it into your geodatabase.

To download ESRI Maps:

  1. Go to www.arcgis.com
  2. Search "World Countries" for countries or "World Administrative Boundaries" for states and territories.
  3. This is a good country map and this is a good state map, but you can select any map that is designated as a feature layer (rather than a map image layer).
  4. Click Open in ArcGIS for Desktop.
  5. A file named "item.pitem" will download. Double-click to open it.
  6. If you only need specific countries/boundaries, right click on the layer and click Open Attribute Table. Select the countries/territories you need.  Close the attribute table. If you are studying the whole world, skip this step.
  7. Right-click on the layer.  Select Data, then Export Data...
  8. Rename your output and save it into your geodatabase.

    *This map will open automatically in ArcGIS.  You can skip the "importing downloaded boundaries into ArcMap" step


Importing Downloaded Boundaries into ArcMap

  1. Navigate to your Downloads Folder.
  2. Right click on the zip file you just downloaded.
  3. Select Extract All.
  4. Set your folder as the destination folder.
  5. Click Extract.
  6. Open ArcMap.
  7. Under "Default Geodatabase for this Map" navigate to your geodatabase. 
  8. Click OK.
  9. Click on the Catalog tab on the righthand side of the arcmap window.
  10. Click the Connect To Folder tab.
  11. Navigate to your folder and click OK.
  12. Open your geodatabase. Drag the administrative boundary shapefile into the map workspace:

 

*ESRI maps are copyright restricted, so you cannot use these maps for commercial purposes.  

 

Take a screenshot and color-code sources with a legend, so people can compare quality of coastline between sources.

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