NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Water Body Data Shapefiles & Raster Files V003

The Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is responsible for the archive and distribution of NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs (https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/competitive-programs/measures)) SRTM, which includes the Water Body Data Shapefiles and Raster Files (~30 m) product. Version 3.0 contains the vectorized coastline masks used by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in the editing, called the SRTM Waterbody Data (SWBD), in shapefile and rasterized formats.

The NASA SRTM data sets result from a collaborative effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the NGA (previously known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA), as well as the participation of the German and Italian space agencies. This collaboration aims to generate a near-global digital elevation model (DEM) of Earth using radar interferometry. SRTM was the primary (and virtually only) payload on the STS-99 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which launched February 11, 2000, and flew for 11 days.

The SRTM swaths extended from ~30 degrees off-nadir to ~58 degrees off-nadir from an altitude of 233 kilometers (km), creating swaths ~225 km wide, and consisted of all land between 60 degrees N and 56 degrees S latitude to account for 80 percent of Earth’s total landmass.

Known Issues

  • Known issues in the NASA SRTM are described in the following publication: Rodriguez, E., C. S. Morris, and J. E. Belz (2006), A global assessment of the SRTM performance, Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 72, 249–260. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.72.3.249

Improvements/Changes from Previous Versions

  • Voids in the Version 3.0 products have been filled with ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) Version 2.0, the Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010 (GMTED2010), and the National Elevation Dataset (NED)

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Michael Kobrick
Last Updated March 27, 2025, 14:11 (UTC)
Created March 27, 2025, 14:11 (UTC)
accessLevel public
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citation NASA JPL. 2013-11-20. NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Water Body Data Shapefiles & Raster Files. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/SRTM/SRTMSWBD.003. https://doi.org/10.5067/MEaSUREs/SRTM/SRTMSWBD.003. The DOI landing page provides citations in APA and Chicago styles..
creator NASA JPL
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identifier C2763268445-LPCLOUD
issued 2013-11-20
landingPage https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/SRTM/SRTMSWBD.003
language {en-US}
metadata_type geospatial
modified 2013-11-20
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publisher LP DAAC
release-place Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA
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spatial -180.0 -56.0 180.0 60.0
temporal 2000-02-11T00:00:00Z/2000-02-21T23:59:59Z
theme {MEaSUREs,geospatial}