Internet Accessible GIS Data Sources for China

Here are sources of downloadable GIS/Map data covering China. Many of these sites offer additional national and global layers as well.

Boundaries - Province and County shapefiles

Less accurate versions exist. These are the best currently known. The Chongqing boundary has been extracted from the corresponding county boundaries.

Place Names

National Geospatial Intelligence Agency - GEOnet Names Server (GNS) hosts a 6 mb zip that is a 20 Mb text file (x, y, name, alt-name...). It converts to a 588 Mb shapefile. Clip out the province or less, otherwise it just bogs down the computer. Your GIS software needs to be able to import a really long text file.

Old 250k Topos

These (WWII era) created by the U.S. Army map service are available for much of China. You will have to georeference them for use in a GIS.

Soviet era Topos

This is a huge collection covering many parts of the world. You will have to georeference them for use in a GIS.

Geology

The China Geological Survey offers 1:2.5 million geology maps (in Chinese). You will have to georeference them for use in a GIS.

SRTM Terrain Model (90m DEM)

The 'research grade' version of the SRTM data is useful for karst areas. There is also a differently generalized version called 'finished grade', as well as several versions with filled voids. SRTM related links and FTP sites change often. Build your own models for terrain analysis from the original so that you can handle the voids appropriately.

Landsat, Landuse, and more

Two or three different years of Landsat scenes are available for many areas of China. These are research grade suitable for change detection and are provided by individual bands as GeoTIFs to allow for multispectral analysis. A variety of additional layers are also available on this site.

Rivers, Drainage Basins, and much more

The USGS Geode site has lots of odds and ends here, with a focus on mineral resources.

Military VMAPO

The Digital Chart of the World (DCW) does not seem to be fully available any more. However the very similar military VMAP0 provides similar base layers. What you get here is 1/4 of the planet per file, about 228 Mb. It unpacks to about 500 Mb of VMAP format files; scale 1:1million. ArcGIS can read it, but other software may not be able to. Convert to shapefile if doing more than 'viewing'. The site may allow clipping a section, however the user interface is somewhat difficult.

ArcGIS Plug-ins and Script Sources

ESRI Scripts

ET GeoWizards

TauDEM

Hawth’s Tools

Cave Survey Software

Compass – Primarily used by American cavers