View source for Roof of the World

The story begins in a computer-aided cartography class.
One of the lab projects was to do a map of Sri Lanka.

The project used a [[DEM]] to generate a [[hillshade]].

The DEM was a [[GTOPO30]] file.

Reading the ESRI Web site, I discovered that by changing the 
extension on the GTOPO30 tile from "DEM" to "BIL" that I could
directly load it into ArcMap.

I did so.

I discovered that the Himalayas are an impressive mountain range.

Suddenly I wanted to do hillshades of central Asia instead of Sri Lanka.

So... I need data. 

Elevations: GTOPO30 will do for starters.



Land cover:

DCW, formatted as e00 files for ArcMap: This is a cool site.
[http://www.maproom.psu.edu/cgi-bin/dcw/dcwcountry.cgi]
It will bundle up the data you request on a country by country basis.
You unpack it and away you go.

Borders, 
Places, 
Hydro: rivers and lakes