Topographical Map of Earth Mission Completed

dolphin558 writes "The mission to provide a topographical layout of a large swath of the planet Earth was completed after a four year partnership between NASA and NGA. The data was derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission launched February of 2000. The map extends from 60 degrees north of the Equator to 56 degrees south with a resolution level (for publicly available data) of 295 feet. The data can be used to set warning guidelines for low lying areas, regulate land use and further refine radar topography for extra-terrestrial applications as in the case of Venus."

Comments

the missing link

[Anonymous Coward]

The data is available here: http://srtm.usgs.gov/

Another link

[Hackenslacker]

http://seamless.usgs.gov/ has the global data for free.

Water features

[RobertB-DC]

If I'm looking at the right data -- a big if -- it looks like the dataset includes some underwater topography, at least to a certain depth. Or is it just that the radar reflects differently from the water, giving the illusion of depth?

I went to http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.p hp, and zoomed in on the local fishing hole (Cedar Creek Lake, near Gun Barrel City, Texas). After picking the appropriate layers (Elevation/SRTM 30m Shaded Relief, turn off the bogus GTOPO60 layer), I could see a pebbly texture where the lake was. The texture looked more realistic on the mud flats on the north end of the lake. Turn on Hydrography/Streams, and you can see where the creek used to be (more or less). Turn on Hydrography/Waterbodies, and the lake is filled in (good for getting your bearings).

Interestingly, though, there are some dropouts visible in the elevation data under the lake. They don't seem related to depth. I wonder if a party barge on water causes a strange echo?

Works on coastal areas, too. However, since the pebbly texture looks the same for the whole area of Matagorda Beach that I looked at, I suspect I'm not seeing anything but a false echo a few feet below the surface.