North America: Terrain & Seafloor 36x36

Map elements include:

• A digital elevation model of all continental terrain within the map frame. Individual publicly available tiles of terrain data were sequentially downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey in TIFF format. Each individual tile was then stitched into a continental mosaic, then “clipped” to highly detailed coastlines. All geoprocessing was performed using ESRI’s ArcGIS Pro software.

• A digital bathymetric model of the surrounding seafloor. Raw, publicly available bathymetric TIFF imagery tiles were obtained from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and combined into a mosaic that fills the map frame. All seafloor geoprocessing was performed using ESRI’s ArcGIS Pro software.

• A detailed depiction of:

  •  Inland water bodies, including intermittent lakes and dry salt flats

  • Mountain summits with corresponding elevations in feet

  • Volcanic mountain summits with corresponding elevations in feet

  • Mountain ranges, plateaus, valleys, and other significant landforms

  • Glaciers, courtesy of the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) program

  • Islands, points, capes, and other coastal features

  • Deserts

  • National, state, and territorial capitals and significant cities scaled by population

  • International and subnational political boundaries

  • Seafloor ridges, seamount chains, basins, fracture zones, and other significant features

  • Pinpoint locations of significant seamounts, guyots, banks, shoals, reefs, and other submerged features

North America: Terrain & Seafloor was Ridgeline's fifth map completed in the Continental Terrain & Seafloor Series. Establishing the map frame and finding an appropriate projection were difficult due to the challenges of attempting to capture a vast area of the globe, ranging from the Isthmus of Panama, to the Arctic Coastline of northern Greenland, to the portion of the Aleutian Islands that stretch into the eastern hemisphere, to the inclusion of the Hawaiian Islands.

Revealing map highlights include the entire northern and northeastern legs of the Pacific Ring of Fire from Kamchatka to Colombia, interesting patterns of isolated upland formations in western Canada, and an explosion of seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean. Like Europe, the North America: Terrain & Seafloor product was created using a spherical projection type, which becomes readily apparent when considering the map graticules (lines of latitude and longitude).