The NIMA satellite images you can download elsewhere on the web site can be used with any unprojected shapefiles. Perhaps the most common source for general shapefile data is the Digital Chart of the World 1:1,000,000 scale coverage. The DCW data include topography (hypsography), populated places, land use/land cover, transportation, drainages, cultural places, utility lines, and airports. It was originally created by the Defense Mapping Agency from aeronautical charts. The data you can download below are from the 1993 edition. The data layers were first distributed as 5 degree tiles, but they were subsequently acquired by ESRI and consolidated by country. In the process, ESRI eliminated some small features.
The data was then obtained by the Penn State University Library and put on their web page, http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/ in zipped files that had to be converted into ArcInfo format before they could be used. I gathered up the data for each of the countries shown on the map below and converted them all to ArcInfo format, then re-zipped them and placed them here, so you can download them, ready to open in ArcInfo or ArcView.
The layers are in native ArcInfo format, but ArcView can read them. I recommend that you convert them to shapefiles in ArcView if you plan to manipulate them. I also recommend that you create a separate folder on your hard drive for each country, because the layers from different countries have the same names, and you will overwrite the data if you don't place the countries in separate folders.
The following table lists the layer names that are included (not all countries have all the themes).
| Available Themes | Layer Type | Coverage Name |
| Political/Ocean | Network | PONET |
| Populated Places | Polygon | PPPOLY |
| Populated Places | Point | PPPOINT |
| Railroads | Line | RRLINE |
| Roads | Line | RDLINE |
| Utilities | Line | UTLINE |
| Drainage | Network | DNNET |
| Drainage | Point | DNPOINT |
| Drainage Supplemental | Point | DSPOINT |
| Hypsography (Topography) | Network | HYNET |
| Hypsography (Topography) | Line | HYPOINT |
| Hypsography Supplemental | Line | HSLINE |
| Hypsography Supplemental | Point | HSPOINT |
| Land Cover | Polygon | LCPOLY |
| Land Cover | Point | LCPOINT |
| Ocean Features | Point | OFPOINT |
| Ocean Features | Line | OFLINE |
| Physiography | Line | PHLINE |
| Aeronautical | Point | AEPOINT |
| Cultural Landmarks | Polygon | CLPOLY |
| Cultural Landmarks | Point | CLPOINT |
| Cultural Landmarks | Line | CLLINE |
| Transportation Structure | Line | TSLINE |
| Transportation Structure | Point | TDPOINT |
| Vegetation | Polygon | VGPOLY |
To download the data, simply click on the country you want (try to hit the center of the country--Lebanon can be a bit tricky). Save the .zip file to your hard disk and then unzip it to the folder for the appropriate country. Also, be aware that for some reason Penn State did not include the Golan Heights in Syria or Israel, and they don't have that region as a separate file either. When I asked them about it, their response was, "Oh yes! The Golan..."
Other digital data for the southern Levant can be found by following these links:
- Nima 10m resolution, orthorectified, panchromatic SPOT Satellite images
- LandSat 28m resolution 5 band false color satellite images
- 1:50,000 scale topographic maps (new Arabic series)
- True color LandSat 14.25m resolution satellite images are available from the GAIA Lab. Press the "Landsat True Color" button on that page.
