Natural Earth "is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m and 1:110 million scales." The vector data comes as ESRI shapefiles. This repository provides the same data but converted to GeoJSON, along with a compressed version.
The conversion is performed using ogr2ogr, part of the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL). GDAL provides links to binaries. Debian provides the package gdal-bin.
An overview of the files, taken from the features page.
| Section | Description | 1:10m | 1:50m | 1:110m |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Countries | Matched boundary lines and polygons with names attributes for countries and sovereign states. Includes dependencies (French Polynesia), map units (U.S. Pacific Island Territories) and sub-national map subunits (Corsica versus mainland Metropolitan France). | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Disputed areas and breakaway regions | From Kashmir to the Elemi Triangle, Northern Cyprus to Western Sahara. | Yes | Yes | |
| First order admin | Provinces, departments, states, etc. Internal boundaries and polygons for all but a few tiny island nations. Includes names attributes and some statistical groupings of the same for smaller countries. | Yes | Yes | |
| Populated places | Point symbols with name attributes. Includes capitals, major cities and towns, plus significant smaller towns in sparsely inhabited regions. We favor regional significance over population census in determining rankings. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Urban polygons | Derived from 2002-2003 MODIS satellite data. | Yes | Yes | |
| Parks and protected areas | U.S. National Park Service units. | Yes | ||
| Pacific nation groupings | Boxes for keeping these far-flung islands tidy. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Water boundary indicators | Partial selection of key 200-mile nautical limits, plus some disputed, treaty, and median lines. | Yes |
| Section | Description | 1:10m | 1:50m | 1:110m |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coastline | Ocean coastline, including major islands. Coastline is matched to land and water polygons. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Land | Land polygons including major islands | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ocean | Ocean polygon split into contiguous pieces. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Minor Islands | Additional small ocean islands ranked to two levels of relative importance. | Yes | ||
| Reefs | Major coral reefs from WDB2. | Yes | ||
| Physical region features | Polygon and point labels of major physical features. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rivers and Lake Centerlines | Ranked by relative importance. Includes name and line width attributes. Don't want minor lakes? Turn on their centerlines to avoid unseemly data gaps. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lakes | Ranked by relative importance, coordinating with river ranking. Includes name attributes. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Glaciated areas | Polygons derived from DCW, except for Antarctica derived from MOA. Includes name attributes for major polar glaciers. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Antarctic ice shelves | Derived from 2003-2004 MOA. Reflects recent ice shelf collapses. | Yes | Yes | |
| Bathymetry | Nested polygons at 0, -200, -1,000, -2,000, -3,000, -4,000, -5,000, -6,000, -7,000, -8,000, -9,000,and -10,000 meters. Created from SRTM Plus. | Yes | ||
| Geographic lines | Polar circles, tropical circles, equator, and International Date Line. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Graticules | 1-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, and 30-degree increments. Includes WGS84 bounding box. | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Data used is version 4.0.0 (released 2017-11-03), the latest as of 2017-11-03.
The Natural Earth disclaimer regarding disputed areas:
Natural Earth Vector draws boundaries of countries according to de facto status. We show who actually controls the situation on the ground. Please feel free to mashup our disputed area themes to match your particular political outlook.