Help for world elevation map

[SeaAngel]

If you're interested in how terrain affects distribution, then you're probably much more likely to get use out of a map that shows altitude (and perhaps temperature and/or rainfall) as color or that has significant distortion of altitude. As I've mentioned in other places, dime-store or thrift-store globes are pretty cheap and most of the basic models from Replogle have terrain molded in already. You can paint them or add an overlay layer with just terrain to get rid of the distracting human things like country boundaries and names. Or you can go with a digital globe like the basic Cesium - WebGL Virtual Globe and Map Engine model.

To reuse one of my favorite pictures:
DSC00975a.jpg

and http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_fi...mFqD3GTPK6.jpg is also helpful with understanding how things work at a gross level.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1993/0380a/report.pdf is fun, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/about/edu/.../ballglobe.pdf is cleaner, and Maps and Globes | USGS Astrogeology Science Center has good examples of a common globe manufacturer layout (none for earth, but I can gen up some of these if you'd like). Making globes of the planets is fun, but I don't think that it adds much beyond the others. And I just came across How to Make a Homemade Globe Using Print-and-Assemble Capability that looks like fun.

Thanks for the info I especially liked the vendian site, it has great source maps!

Anyway, you could always do what my globe does - just pick a different scale for elevations than you do for overland distances.

This is exactly what I plan to do :-) According to wikipedia, when it comes to temperature, moving up 100 metres (330 ft) on a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving 80 kilometres (45 miles or 0.75° of latitude) towards the pole. I'll see if I can use that ratio...