United States: Terrain & Seafloor 36x48

United States: Terrain & Seafloor is the ultimate physical map of the United States and its overseas territories. This wall map is printed on heavyweight matte poster paper at high resolution and shipped in a sturdy cardboard tube to avoid creasing. The map measures exactly 36 inches by 48 inches, with landscape orientation.

Map elements include:

• A digital elevation model of the United States and its territories. Imagery was downloaded from the U.S. Geological Survey in TIFF format, tile-by-tile. Individually downloaded tiles were stitched together to form a national elevation mosaic and clipped to a highly accurate continental coastline.

  
  

• A digital bathymetric model of the adjacent Atlantic and Pacific seafloor. TIFF imagery tiles were downloaded from the world's foremost authority on seafloor mapping, the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), and stitched into a mosaic.

  
  

• A detailed depiction of the following physical geographic features:

  • Perennial and intermittent bodies of water

  • Nationally significant rivers and creeks

  • Salt flats

  • Mountain and other landform prominence summits with corresponding elevations in feet

  • Volcanoes, with corresponding elevations or depths 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

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

  • Pinpoint locations of significant seamounts, guyots, banks, shoals, reefs; all of which are precisely labeled

    
    

• Political elements, including:

  • International boundaries and capitals

  • State and provincial boundaries and capitals

  • Cities with more than 25,000 residents, delineated into several classes by population

  • Select towns and villages of fewer than 25,000 residents

  • Select unincorporated communities

    
    

• A detailed depiction of the following recreational, tribal, and military elements:

  • U.S. national parks

  • U.S. national park units

  • U.S. national wildlife refuges

  • U.S. national forests

  • U.S. military bases

  • U.S. Native American tribal lands

  • Canadian national parks

  • Mexican national parks

  • Select Cuban and Bahamian national parks

    
    

• Some transportation elements, including:

  • Major interstates

  • Scaled secondary highways

  • Canadian controlled-access highways

  • Mexican Autopistas (toll roads)

United States: Terrain & Seafloor was the ninth and most labor-intensive map produced by Ridgeline Geographic. At a national level, a 3-foot-by-4-foot map frame leaves ample room for the balanced blending of many map elements and details that, when taken together, display a visual national fabric of the United States, as this highly detailed map emphasizes relationships between terrain, conservation land, transportation corridors, and human settlement.

Publicly available data was utilized to depict the American mosaic of conservation lands, including national park units, national wildlife refuges, and national forests. Military lands, many of which are managed to some degree as conservation lands, are also present on the map. Tribal lands depict the current homelands of the indigenous peoples of North America.

Areas of rich detail and interest include the U.S. Intermountain West, the bathymetrically diverse Bahamas, the complex Basin and Range provinces of northern Mexico, and densely populated U.S. Northeast.