Re: mpAreaNames

From: David Brown (dbrown AT XXXXXX)
Date: Fri Jul 09 2004 - 11:12:17 MDT


Heiko,

With respect to accessing the names in the map database from NCL,
here is a simple script to retrieve the names and print them to a file:

begin
        w = create "w" ncgmWorkstationClass noparent end create
         mp = create "mp" mapPlotClass w
        "mpDataBaseVersion" : "MediumRes"
         end create
        getvalues mp
        "mpAreaNames" : anames
        end getvalues
       asciiwrite("areanames.txt", anames)
end

Note that this results in the "short form" names (only enough of the
name to ensure that it is unique), rather than
the fully qualified name. It would be nice if we had a way to retrieve
the full names as well, but currently we don't.
  -Dave Brown

On Jul 8, 2004, at 5:20 PM, Dave Kennison wrote:

>
> Heiko,
>
>> thank you very much for your information. I managed now to plot all
>> countries I need from the Earth..2 database. If you have it at hand,
>> could you send me the program you used to print the names included
>> into
>> the database, as example on how to use the database.
>
> I have such a program in FORTRAN, which I had hoped to adapt and
> comment
> and send with this email, but I didn't get in done in time. If it
> would
> be useful to you, I will send it on Monday. (I'll be on vacation leave
> tomorrow.)
>
>> I'm now wondering where the data of the Ncarg4_1 database is coming
>> from. Do you know about any references? It seems to be much more
>> up-to-date than the CIA World Database 2 (which corresponds to 1980).
>
> Data sources that we have used include the following:
>
> - A. V. Hershey (for the original databases 'CO', 'PO', 'PS', and
> 'US')
>
> - large-format USGS maps digitized at NCAR by me (for political
> outlines
> used in the database 'PS' and copied over into "Earth..x")
>
> - on-line USGS data for the coastlines in "Earth..x"
>
> - WDB2 for some of the political outlines for countries resulting
> from
> the breakup of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia; for the
> most
> part, these were provincial boundaries that became country
> boundaries
>
> - WDB2 and the World Vector Shoreline (WVS) for coastlines in the
> RANGS/GSHHS database; these were heavily processed by Paul Wessel,
> Walter Smith, and/or Reiner Feistel to remove errors, and were
> originally used in the package GMT (Generic Mapping Tools)
>
>> I'm mainly interested in political boundaries. While the
>> coastline-boundaries from the RANGS database are more than good
>> enough,
>> even in MediumResolution, the resolution while plotting some smaller
>> European country, i.e. Netherlands is quite low. Do you or anybody in
>> the list know about a free higher resolution database for political
>> boundaries?
>
> I would like to find such a source. One thing that I could do is use
> data from WDB2 to improve the resolution of the political boundaries in
> the "Earth..x" databases, but that is time-consuming, since the data
> are
> very buggy and require a lot of massaging. They are also somewhat out
> of
> date, which may not be an issue for many countries, but is an issue for
> some.
>
> ESRI has a database called ESRI World Basemap Data, from which one can
> download selected portions in "shapefile" format. When last I checked,
> they didn't want downloaders to convert the data to another format
> (which
> is what I would like to do). According to the Web site, these data
> were
> published in 1999 and reflect political realities as of about
> 1/1/1992, so
> they are about 12 years out of date; however, it is possible that they
> do
> react to some changes (like the creation of Serbia and Montenegro from
> ...
> whatever that piece of Yugoslavia was called).
>
> GMT contains political outlines, but they are sort of in the same boat
> as
> we are. They say:
>
> The political borders are for the most part 1970ies-style and do not
> reflect the recent border rearrangements in Europe. We intend to
> update
> these as high-resolution data become available to us.
>
> And, as an aside, they have another problem that we do:
>
> Some users of "pscoast" will not be satisfied with what they find
> for the
> Antarctic shoreline. In Antarctica, the boundary between ice and
> ocean
> varies seasonally and interannually. There are some areas of
> permanent
> sea ice. In addition to these time-varying ice-ocean boundaries,
> there
> are also ice grounding lines where ice goes from floating on the sea
> to
> sitting on land, and lines delimiting areas of rock outcrop. For con-
> sistency's sake, we have used the World Vector Shoreline throughout
> the world in "pscoast", as described in the GMT cookbook Appendix K.
> Users who need specific boundaries in Antarctica should get the
> Antarc-
> tic Digital Database, prepared by the British Antarctic Survey,
> Scott
> Polar Research Institute, World Conservation Monitoring Centre,
> under
> the auspices of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. This
> data base contains various kinds of limiting lines for Antarctica
> and
> is available on CD-ROM. It is published by the Scientific Committee
> on
> Antarctic Research, Scott Polar Research Institute, Lensfield Road,
> Cambridge CB2 1ER, United Kingdom.
>
> Dave Kennison
>
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