Introduction
In 1996, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) developed
a global topographic elevation model designated as GTOPO30
at a horizontal resolution of 30 arc-seconds for the entire
Earth. Because no single source of topographic information
covered the entire land surface, GTOPO30 was derived from
eight raster and vector sources that included a substantial
amount of U.S. Defense Mapping Agency data. The quality
of the elevation data in GTOPO30 varies widely; there are
no spatially-referenced metadata, and the major topographic
features such as ridgelines and valleys are not well repre-
sented. Despite its coarse resolution and limited attributes,
GTOPO30 has been widely used for a variety of hydrological,
climatological, and geomorphological applications as well as
military applications, where a regional, continental, or global
scale topographic model is required. These applications have
ranged from delineating drainage networks and watersheds to
using digital elevation data for the extraction of topographic
structure and three-dimensional (3D) visualization exercises
(Jenson and Domingue, 1988; Verdin and Greenlee, 1996;
Lehner and others, 2008). Many of the fundamental geophysi-
cal processes active at the Earth’s surface are controlled or
strongly inuenced by topography, thus the critical need for
high-quality terrain data (Gesch, 1994). U.S. Department of
Defense requirements for mission planning, geographic regis-
tration of remotely sensed imagery, terrain visualization, and
map production are similarly dependent on
global topographic data.
Since the time GTOPO30 was com-
pleted, the availability of higher-quality
elevation data over large geographic
areas has improved markedly. New data
sources include global Digital Terrain
Elevation Data (DTED
®
) from the Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission (SRTM),
Canadian elevation data, and data from
the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satel-
lite (ICESat). Given the widespread use
of GTOPO30 and the equivalent 30-arc-
second DTED
®
level 0, the USGS and the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
(NGA) have collaborated to produce an
enhanced replacement for GTOPO30, the
Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010
(GMTED2010)
By Jeffrey J. Danielson and Dean B. Gesch
Global Land One-km Base Elevation (GLOBE) model and
other comparable 30-arc-second-resolution global models,
using the best available data. The new model is called the
Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010, or
GMTED2010 for short. This suite of products at three differ-
ent resolutions (approximately 1,000, 500, and 250 meters) is
designed to support many applications directly by providing
users with generic products (for example, maximum, mini-
mum, and median elevations) that have been derived directly
from the raw input data that would not be available to the
general user or would be very costly and time-consuming
to produce for individual applications. The source of all the
elevation data is captured in metadata for reference purposes.
It is also hoped that as better data become available in the
future, the GMTED2010 model will be updated.
Existing GTOPO30 Elevation Model
GTOPO30, a widely used global elevation model, was
produced by the USGS and became available in 1996 (Gesch
and others, 1999). GTOPO30 provides elevations for the entire
global land surface on a grid every 30 arc-seconds of latitude
and longitude, which is about 1-kilometer spacing at the equa-
tor (g. 1).
At the time GTOPO30 was developed, and even today,
no one source of topographic information covered the entire
Figure 1. GTOPO30 elevation model.