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#                         ISLSCP II Land Outline Data                          #
#                at 0.25, 0.5 and 1-degree Spatial Resolutions               #
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The files in this directory were produced by the ISLSCP II staff based on the 30 
arcsecond (~1km) Earth Observing System (EOS) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) 
provided by Dr. Thomas Logan from NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). These 
are global, coarse resolution (0.25, 0.5 and 1-degree spatial resolutions) binary 
( 1 and 0) overlays of land/water and land/sea boundaries.

Any problems encountered with the data set should be reported to Eric Brown de 
Colstoun at ericbdc@ltpmail.gsfc.nasa.gov


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The data files include:

  land_water_outline_xx.asc: Outline of the land masses and water bodies, including 
  many outlines of inland water bodies, with values of 0 and 1 (Outline=1). xx can
  be qd, hd, and 1d denoting a spatial resolution of 0.25, 0.5 and 1-degree, respectively.

  land_only_outline_xx.asc: Outline of the land masses and oceans, with values of 0 
  and 1 (Outline=1). xx can be qd, hd, and 1d denoting a spatial resolution of 0.25, 0.5 
  and 1-degree, respectively. NOTE that these files do not contain inland water
  bodies and are different from the "land_water_outline_xx.asc" files.

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ASCII File Format
------------------
All of the files in the ISLSCP Initiative II data collection are in the ASCII, 
or text format. The file format consists of numerical fields of varying length, 
which are delimited by a single space and arranged in columns and rows. The 
values for the binary land outlines files are written as the integers 0 and 1.

The files at different spatial resolutions each contain the following numbers of 
columns and rows:

   One degree (1d): 360 columns by 180 rows 
   1/2 degree (hd): 720 columns by 360 rows 
   1/4 degree (qd): 1440 columns by 720 rows 

All files are gridded to a common equal-angle lat/long grid, where the 
coordinates of the upper left corner of the files are located at 180 degrees W, 
90 degrees N and the lower right corner coordinates are located at 180 degrees E,
90 degrees S. Data in the files are ordered from North to South and from West to
East beginning at 180 degrees West and 90 degrees North.

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