Provided by: gmt-common_5.4.3+dfsg-1_all 
NAME
gshhg - Extract data tables from binary GSHHG or WDBII data files
SYNOPSIS
gshhg binaryfile.b [ -Amin ] [ -G ] [ -Iid ] [ -L ] [ -Nlevel ] [ -Qe|i ] [ -bobinary ] [ -donodata
] [ -oflags ]
Note: No space is allowed between the option flag and the associated arguments.
DESCRIPTION
gshhg reads the binary coastline (GSHHG) or political boundary or river (WDBII) files and writes an ASCII
(or binary; see -b) listing to standard output. It automatically handles byte-swabbing between different
architectures. Optionally, only segment header info can be displayed. The header info has the format ID
npoints hierarchical-level source area f_area west east south north container ancestor, where
hierarchical levels for coastline polygons go from 1 (shoreline) to 4 (lake inside island inside lake
inside land). Source is either W (World Vector Shoreline) or C (CIA World Data Bank II); lower case is
used if a lake is a river-lake. The west east south north is the enclosing rectangle, area is the polygon
area in km^2 while f_area is the actual area of the ancestor polygon, container is the ID of the polygon
that contains this polygon (-1 if none), and ancestor is the ID of the polygon in the full resolution set
that was reduced to yield this polygon (-1 if full resolution since there is no ancestor). For line data
the header is simply ID npoints hierarchical-level source west east south north. For more information
about the file formats, see TECHNICAL INFORMATION below.
REQUIRED ARGUMENTS
binaryfile.b
GSHHG or WDBII binary data file as distributed with the GSHHG data supplement. Any of the 5
standard resolutions (full, high, intermediate, low, crude) can be used.
OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS
-Amin Only output information for the polygon if its area equals or exceeds min [Default outputs all
polygons].
-G Write output that can be imported into GNU Octave or Matlab by ending segments with a NaN-record.
-Iid Only output information for the polygon that matches id. Use -Ic to get all the continents only
[Default outputs all polygons]. See below for the id of the largest polygons.
-L Only output a listing of polygon or line segment headers [Default outputs headers and data
records].
-N Only output features whose level matches the given level [Default will output all levels].
-Qe|i Control what to do with river-lakes (river sections large enough to be stored as closed polygons).
Use -Qe to exclude them and -Qi to exclude everything else instead [Default outputs all polygons].
-bo[ncols][type] (more …)
Select native binary output.
-donodata (more …)
Replace output columns that equal NaN with nodata.
-ocols[,…] (more …)
Select output columns (0 is first column).
EXAMPLES
To convert the entire intermediate GSHHG binary data to ASCII files for Octave/Matlab, run
gmt gshhg gshhs_i.b --IO_SEGMENT_MARKER=N > gshhs_i.txt
To only get a listing of the headers for the river data set at full resolution, try
gmt gshhg wdb_rivers_f.b -L > riverlisting.txt
To only extract lakes, excluding river-lakes, from the high resolution file, try
gmt gshhg gshhs_h.b -Ee -N2 > all_lakes.txt
SPECIFIC POLYGONS
None of the polygons have any name information associated with them (i.e., the metadata does not contain
this information). However, here are the largest polygons:
┌────┬────────────────────────────────┐
│ ID │ Landmass │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 0 │ Eurasia │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1 │ Africa │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 2 │ North America │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 3 │ South America │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 4 │ Antarctica (AC grounding line) │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 5 │ Antarctica (AC ice line) │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 6 │ Australia │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 7 │ Greenland │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 8 │ New Guinea │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 9 │ Borneo │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 10 │ Madagascar │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 11 │ Baffin Island │
├────┼────────────────────────────────┤
│ 12 │ Indonesia │
└────┴────────────────────────────────┘
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Users who wish to access the GSHHG or WDBII data directly from their custom programs should consult the
gshhg.c and gshhg.h source code and familiarize themselves with the data format and how various
information flags are packed into a single 4-byte integer. While we do not maintain any Octave/Matlab
code to read these files we are aware that both MathWorks and IDL have made such tools available to their
users. However, they tend not to update their code and our file structure has evolved considerably over
time, breaking their code. Here, some general technical comments on the binary data files are given.
GSHHG: These files contain completely closed polygons of continents and islands (level 1), lakes (level
2), islands-in-lakes (level 3) and ponds-in-islands-in-lakes (level 4); a particular level can be
extracted using the -N option. Continents are identified as the first 6 polygons and can be extracted via
the -Ic option. The IDs for the continents are Eurasia (0), Africa (1), North America (2), South America
(3), Antarctica (4), and Australia (5). Files are sorted on area from large to small. There are two
sub-groups for level 2: Regular lakes and the so-called “river-lakes”, the latter being sections of a
river that are so wide to warrant a polygon representation. These river-lakes are flagged in the header
(also see -Q). All five resolutions are free of self-intersections. Areas of all features have been
computed using a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection centered on the polygon centroids, using WGS-84
as the ellipsoid. GMT use the GSHHG as a starting point but then partition the polygons into pieces using
a resolution-dependent binning system; parts of the world are then rebuilt into closed polygons on the
fly as needed. For more information on GSHHG processing, see Wessel and Smith (1996). WDBII. These files
contain sets of line segments not necessarily in any particular order. Thus, it is not possible to
extract information pertaining to just one river or one country. Furthermore, the 4 lower resolutions
derive directly from the full resolution by application of the Douglas-Peucker algorithm (see gshhg_dp),
hence self-intersections are increasingly likely as the resolution is degraded. Note that the river-lakes
included in GSHHG are also duplicated in the WDBII river files so that each data set can be a stand-alone
representation. Users who wish to access both data sets can recognize the river-lakes features by
examining the header structure (see the source code for details); they are also the only closed polygons
in the WDBII river file. There are many levels (classes) in the river file: River-lakes (0), Permanent
major rivers (1), Additional major rivers (2), Additional rivers (3), Minor rivers (4), Intermittent
rivers – major (6), Intermittent rivers – additional (7), Intermittent rivers – minor (8), Major canals
(10), Canals of lesser importance (11), and Canals – irrigation type (12). For the border file there are
three levels: National boundaries (1), Internal domestic boundaries (2), and international maritime
boundaries (3). Individual levels or classes may be extracted via -N.
REFERENCES
Douglas, D. H., and T. K. Peucker, 1973, Algorithms for the reduction of the number of points required to
represent a digitized line of its caricature, Can. Cartogr., 10, 112-122.
Gorny, A. J., 1977, World Data Bank II General User GuideRep. PB 271869, 10pp, Central Intelligence
Agency, Washington, DC.
Soluri, E. A., and V. A. Woodson, 1990, World Vector Shoreline, Int. Hydrograph. Rev., LXVII(1), 27-35.
Wessel, P., and W. H. F. Smith, 1996, A global, self-consistent, hierarchical, high-resolution shoreline
database, J. Geophys. Res., 101(B4), 8741-8743.
SEE ALSO
gmt
COPYRIGHT
2018, P. Wessel, W. H. F. Smith, R. Scharroo, J. Luis, and F. Wobbe
5.4.3 Jan 03, 2018 GSHHG(1gmt)