Explore land elevation and seafloor depth using the Mapzen Terrain Tiles public dataset. Hover over the terrain for an approximate height in metres, or tap the map on a touchscreen.
Country borders and place labels are separate map layers. Turn them on or off using the right-hand controls. Labels show major cities at wider zoom, then progressively include smaller towns and villages as you zoom closer. Where terrain data is available, a colour-matched approximate elevation appears beneath selected settlement names. Major cities are prioritised at wide zoom; smaller settlements appear as you zoom closer. These place names are reference annotations, not clickable markers. The units button switches readings between metres and feet.
Colours and cursor readings use the same elevation dataset. Heights are modelled ground or seabed elevations, not building height or a live measurement.
Resolution and accuracy vary by region. Values can differ from GPS, local surveys and official benchmarks. Settlement readings use fixed geographic reference points and a fixed terrain resolution (zoom level 10), so city elevations do not change when the place-label geometry changes at a different zoom. Major cities use cartographic points from Natural Earth; smaller settlements keep their first observed reference point for that map session. They are not the highest, lowest or average elevation of the municipality. The polar regions beyond Web Mercator's latitude limits are not shown.
Blue shading is reserved for water. Some high-zoom ocean elevation tiles contain 0 m placeholders rather than seabed depths; those pixels are coloured as water using the coastline mask, not as green land, and the source data is not presented as a measured seabed depth. All mapped dry land below sea level uses muted olive, and low land above sea level remains green. Terrain elevation values are unchanged. At closer zooms, OpenStreetMap-based water polygons define the visible shoreline and inland water edges. The fallback Natural Earth land mask uses native canvas clipping for complex polygons, subtracts mapped inland lakes, and separately recognises the Caspian Sea, which Natural Earth classifies as ocean rather than a lake. Ocean water can look uniformly blue where higher-detail vectors replace unreliable raster coastline colours; underwater detail there remains approximate. Some small islands, channels, or mapped water bodies may remain imperfect.
The optional Rivers, Lakes, Roads and Built-up areas layers use OpenFreeMap / OpenMapTiles vector geometry. They are semi-transparent, never alter the underlying terrain elevation, and become more detailed as you zoom. Road and building coverage depends on OpenStreetMap completeness. Boundary and place-name information comes from OpenFreeMap using OpenStreetMap contributors and OpenMapTiles. International borders may be generalised or disputed, and place coverage varies by region. Land-sea masking uses Natural Earth physical land polygons via world-atlas.
For exploration only. Do not use these estimates for flood risk, engineering, navigation, or property-level elevation decisions.
Terrain sources and required credits
Elevation tiles: Mapzen / AWS Open Data. The source dataset combines multiple DEM products with differing update cycles and resolutions. Over the Caspian Sea, GEBCO 2026 gridded bathymetry shows modelled underwater relief. If the GEBCO service supplies a numeric point measurement, the hover reading gives seabed elevation relative to global mean sea level and approximate depth below the Caspian's roughly -29 m water surface. If the service cannot provide a validated seabed value, the reading remains clearly labelled as water surface rather than inventing a depth. GEBCO data includes interpolations from older soundings and is not appropriate for navigation. The underlying Mapzen DEM outside the Caspian remains unchanged. Full attribution and usage terms.
- ArcticDEM: DEM(s) created from DigitalGlobe, Inc. imagery, funded under NSF awards 1043681, 1559691, and 1542736
- Australia: © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2017
- Austria: © offene Daten Österreichs – Digitales Geländemodell (DGM) Österreich
- Canada: Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada
- Europe: Produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union, EU-DEM layers
- Global ETOPO1: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- Mexico: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016
- New Zealand: Copyright 2011 Crown copyright, Land Information New Zealand and the New Zealand Government. All rights reserved
- Norway: © Kartverket
- United Kingdom: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved
- United States 3DEP and global GMTED2010 and SRTM: Data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey
