G S H H G

Global Self-consistent Hierarchical High-resolution Geography
Distributed under the GNU Lesser Public License; see file
LICENSE.TXT in main GMT directory. It was formerly called
GSHHS (... Shorelines instead of Geography).

Version June 15, 2017

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.7 which replaced all of Northern Mariana Islands
with CUSP data from NOAA after simplifying down to ~50 meter
resolution to match GSHHS full level, added two missing islands in
Norway: Sula and Ellingsøya with the new data from Statens Kartverk
via Birgitte R. Furevik [[email protected]], and added Kosovo border with Serbia.

Version August 17, 2016

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.6 which fixed 11 crossings in Antarctica
grounding line and one in the Antarctica ice front line.

Version April 12, 2016

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.5 which added missing boundary between Sudan and South Sudan.
Fixed non-closure of the Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary borders.

Version January 1, 2015

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.4 which restored Lake Maelaren in Sweden and
reverted 11 "lakes" to islands in that lake instead.

Version November 1, 2014

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.3 which removed the obsolete Saudi-Kuwait
Neutral Zone diamond-shaped border and replaced with something
resembling what Google Earth shows.

Version August 1, 2014

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.2 which corrects a series of internal cross-
overs in the new Antarctica ice-front and grounding lines.

Version July 1, 2014

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.1 which restores the missing Peter I Island.
Separated gshhg.h in to gmt_gshhg.h with program-specific support
and gshhg.h which only defines the structures used by GSHHG.

Version Feb 1, 2014

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.3.0 which introduces levels 5,6 for Antarctica
ice-front and grounding line.  Only ice-front can be used in GMT 5.1.x
and these will report level = 5 and source = A.  GMT 5.2.x will be
able to offer more choices.

Version Nov 1, 2013

No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.2.4

Version Jul 1, 2013

We have removed gshhg_dp.c and gshhgtograss.c from gshhg in GMT5.
The reason is that the Douglas-Peucker algorithm is not ideal for
coastline polygons as it tends to create self-intersections. For
users who still need D-P reduction, see gmtdp in the GMT core.  The
GRASS formatter is no longer needed since GSHHG is also distributed
as shapefiles.  Work with the latest GSHHG data set version 2.2.3.

Version Jan 1, 2013
No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.2.2

Version Apr 1, 2012
No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.2.1

Version Jul 15, 2011
Work with the latest GSHHG data set version 2.2.0.  Here, the
greenwich flag is now 2-bit with values 0-3 (0 = no Greenwich
nor Dateline crossing, 1 = Greenwich crossing, 2 = Dateline
crossing, 3 = both), and the area is stored with a magnitude
embedded in the flag; see code for details.  This ensure higher
precision for smaller areas.  gshhg.c is now a module.  Also
set river flag for the river-lakes in the WDBII files so they
can be detected.

Version Jan 1, 2011
No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.1.1

Version July 1, 2010
No source code changes but expected to work with the latest GSHHG
data set version 2.1.0

Version July 1, 2009
This version include a revised GSHHG data format in which the
polygon ID of the parent (that contains this polygon) is given
(or -1 if none), as well as the ancestor (Id of the full resolution
polygon that yielded this reduced polygon), and the area of the
reduced resolution polygon.  We also keep track if a lake is a
river-lake or a regular lake.  The header structure has thus
increased by three integer items.  The GSHHG data set is now
version 2.0; from now on we will no longer give version number for
the gshhg supplement programs since it leads to confusion with the
GSHHG data version numbers.  See gshhg.h for new structure.

Version 1.11 Feb 15, 2009
This version adds the -I<id> option go gshhg so that a single
polygon can be extracted.
Also, thanx to Markus Metz,GSHHG shorelines can now be imported
directly into GRASS with v.in.gshhs, a GRASS AddOn available on
https://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_AddOns. This module
works with GRASS 6.4 and GSHHG databases version 1.4 and above.
As an alternative there is still gshhgtograss, a standalone program
creating a simple GRASS ASCII vector. It is recommended to use
v.in.gshhs instead.

Version 1.10 May 1, 2008
Due to a numbering snafu the GMT 4.2.1 release started calling
the GSHHG data set using the same numbering as the GSHHG software.
Thus, GSHHG v 1.9 is the data set version that follows v1.6.
For the GMT 4.3.0 release the GSHHG version is 1.10 since we
have added two missing islands off Long Island, NY.
Also, thanx to Markus Metz the gshhgtograss.c has been updated.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.9 Sept 1, 2007

Now distributing the WDB borders and rivers with GSHHG, hence
gshhg.c needed a few tweaks to recognize the difference.  No
data format change, but we increment version number to 1.6 do
indicate a change in composition (river+borders added).
--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.8 March 31, 2007

Minor fix to ensure gshhgtograss.c will compile.  Version 1.5
of the GSHHG data released, fixing a few crossings and dupli-
cate points.  No data format change so 1.7 can read as well.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.7 Nov 11, 2006

Minor bug fix: gshhg.c used && instead of & in one of the bit
manipulations, thus always yielding 1 as the level.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.6 May 13, 2006

Minor update to handle the latest GSHHG v1.4 database. Once again
we claim that now, for sure, GSHHG is finally self-consistent!
Due to a bug in our consistency checker a few lingering problems
made it into v1.3 - these should now all be gone.  Many thanx to
Thomas DeMay for contributing the results from his error checking.
We have also once again made changes to the GSHHG header structure
to make it only contain integer*4 (and not a mix of 2- and 4-byte
integers) as well as be a multiple of 16 bytes.  Thus, the new
structure is

int id;				/* Unique polygon id number, starting at 0 */
int n;				/* Number of points in this polygon */
int flag;			/* level + version << 8 + greenwich << 16 + source << 24
int west, east, south, north;	/* min/max extent in micro-degrees */
int area;			/* Area of polygon in 1/10 km^2 */


Here, level, version, greenwhich, and source are
level:		1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake
version:	Set to 4 for GSHHG version 1.4
greenwich:	1 if Greenwich is crossed
source:		0 = CIA WDBII, 1 = WVS

These values are recovered using bit math.  For further info about
GSHHG see the earlier comments below.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.5 Sept 14, 2004

Minor update to handle the latest GSHHG v1.3 database.  GSHHG is now
[finally] self-consistent: There are no longer any lingering cross-
overs (internal or external), all polygons are explicitly closed,
and there are no duplicate points along the lines.  The GSHHG header
record has been expanded by one 4-byte element (called version and
set to 3 for all polygons) so that the size of the entire header
structure is a multiple of 8 bytes (now 40 bytes).  The old structure
was not as portable because padding of structures is architecture-
dependent.  To be explicit, each header in v1.3 now consist of the
following variables:

int id;				/* Unique polygon id number, starting at 0 */
int n;				/* Number of points in this polygon */
int level;			/* 1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake */
int west, east, south, north;	/* min/max extent in micro-degrees */
int area;			/* Area of polygon in 1/10 km^2 */
int version;			/* Polygon version, set to 3
short int greenwich;		/* Greenwich is 1 if Greenwich is crossed */
short int source;		/* 0 = CIA WDBII, 1 = WVS */

We remind users that the polygons are sorted by polygon length (not
area), and that the w/e/s/n values for each polygon are those based on
the full resolution and are simply copied to the other resolutions.
The decimated polygons will in general have a different w/e/s/n set
which you can find if you calculate the actual w/e/s/n values.

Although gshhg is distributed as a GMT supplement, it makes no references
to GMT include files or libraries.  If you need to compile gshhg without
placing the gshhg directory under GMT/src you can run

cc gshhg.c -O2 -lm -o gshhg
cc gshhg_dp.c -O2 -lm -o gshhg_dp

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.4 Sept 5, 2000

Now GSHHG source code is distributed as a GMT supplement.  The data
may be obtained separately from the SOEST or NGDC web sites as before.
The FLIP macro is no longer needed as the programs will determine if
swab'ing is required.  Do no use dd on the data.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.3 Nov 8, 1999

Now all code and data files are explicitly distributed under the
GNU Public License, see file LICENSE.TXT for more details.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.2 May 18, 1999

Made programs POSIX.1 compliant and added binary open for DOS.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.1, April 30, 1996

Paul Wessel, G&G, SOEST, U of Hawaii ([email protected])
Walter H. F. Smith, NOAA Geosciences Lab ([email protected])

Ref: Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith, 1996, A global self-consistent,
        hierarchical, high-resolution shoreline database, J. Geophys.
        Res., 101, 8741-8743.

For details on data processing etc. we refer you to that reference.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
This README file explains the usage of the gshhg data sets.  The
archive consists of the following files (after you unzip the compressed
files using bzip2 -d):

Name		Content
--------------------------------------------------------------------
README		This file
gshhg.h		Header file for programs
gshhg.c		Program to extract ASCII data
gshhg_dp.c	Program to decimate polygons
gshhs_f.b	Full resolution data
gshhs_h.b	High resolution data
gshhs_i.b	Intermediate resolution data
gshhs_l.b	Low resolution data
gshhs_c.b	Crude resolution data

In addition, the following program was supplied by Simon Cox ([email protected])
and can be used to import the *.b files into a GRASS database:

gshhgtograss.c	Import *.b into GRASS GIS database

All the *.b file share the same file structure; thus the gshhg program can
read and extract data from any of the files.  The program's purpose is
simply to demonstrate how a programmer may access the data.  Presumably,
the user wants to access the data from within his/her own programs.
If plotting the data is the only purpose, we strongly recommend you
instead use the GMT package which comes with the same data and tools for
plotting filled landmasses, coastlines, political borders, and rivers.
	The file(s) contain several successive logical blocks of the form

<polygon header>
<polygon points>

Each header consist of the following variables:

int id;				/* Unique polygon id number, starting at 0 */
int n;				/* Number of points in this polygon */
int level;			/* 1 land, 2 lake, 3 island_in_lake, 4 pond_in_island_in_lake */
int west, east, south, north;	/* min/max extent in micro-degrees */
int area;			/* Area of polygon in 1/10 km^2 */
short int greenwich;		/* Greenwich is 1 if Greenwich is crossed */
short int source;		/* 0 = CIA WDBII, 1 = WVS */

Here, int is 4-byte integers and short means 2-byte integers.

The polygon points are stored as n successive records of the form

int	x;	/* longitude of a point in micro-degrees */
int	y;	/* latitude of a point in micro-degrees */

On some systems, the byte order is swapped relative to the order used on
a Sun workstation (on which the current data were processed).  To
determine if you need to swap the byte pairs, do the following test:

1. Compile gshhg
2. Run gshhg gshhs_c.b | head -1	# This shows the 1st line of output
3. If the output does not look exactly like the next line:

P      0    1240 1 W 79793839.900 -17.53378 190.32600 -34.83044  77.71625

   you most likely need to swap the byte-pairs.  Simply recompile gsggs with
  the switch -DFLIP and see if that did the trick.
4. If all fails you may email one of the authors for advice.

Compile the two programs as follows (with or without the -DFLIP switch):

cc -O gshhg.c -o gshhg [-DFLIP]
cc -O gshhg_dp.c -o gshhg_dp -lm [-DFLIP]

[and optionally cc -O -o gshhgtograss gshhgtograss.c -lm [-DFLIP]]

We have provided 5 different resolution of the data which should
satisfy just about any user.  The [h,i,l,c]-versions were
derived from the gshhs_f.b full resolution file using the
Douglas-Peucker algorithm as implemented in gshhg_dp.c  The
tolerances used were:

File		Content			Tolerance
-------------------------------------------------
gshhs_h.b	High resolution			0.2 km
gshhs_i.b	Intermediate resolution	1.0 km
gshhs_l.b	Low resolution			5.0 km
gshhs_c.b	Crude resolution		25  km

However, should you need to decimate the full data set using a
different tolerance you can use the program gshhg_dp to do so:

gshhg_dp gshhs_f.b your_tolerance_in_km newfile.b

gshhg.c can then read the resulting newfile.b
[Note that output from gshhg_dp WILL NOT need byte swapping since
it is created on your machine].

The Douglas-Peucker routine implemented in gshhg_dp was kindly
provided by Dr. Gary J. Robinson, Environmental Systems Science Centre,
University of Reading, Reading, UK ([email protected]).

Good Luck,
Paul Wessel and Walter. H. F. Smith

GMT URL:   https://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu