Costa Rica

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Typical of international locations, it is difficult to find free geospatial data for Costa Rica.  As usual, some commercial companies (Intec/LandInfo in this case) sells some data.  This means there's a financial hurdle to beginning the process (around $4500 in this case).

In March of 2003, a 200m elevation grid became available (see the BT Repository).  Redistribution is allowed under the terms of the included README file.  This is thanks to Patrick Van Laake who prepared the data for the Instituto Geográfico Nacional of Costa Rica, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

As of 2004 there is also 90m NASA SRTM, although there are plenty of gaps due to the rugged mountainous character of the country.

Digital data

• GIS Data Depot - Costa Rica
  • includes a free Hypsography layer, in ArcInfo Export format (.e00)
  • could try to convert it to an elevation grid
• DIGITAL CHART OF THE WORLD for Costa Rica (once online at the UNEP CEP)
  • vector data for Administrative Boundaries, Cities, Drainage Network, Land Use, Roads, Towns
  • very inaccurate and incomplete
• CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza)
  • aka. Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Learning Center
  • has a GIS lab, might have some useful C.R. data
• Costa Rica Maps - Earth Observation Systems Laboratory
  • site shows images of GIS coverages that they have, which can be requested from them
  • Drainage Basins, Conservation, County/District Maps, Land Cover, Soil, Life Zones, Road Network
  • detail is around 1:200,000 scale, in LCC projection

Commercial data

INTEC / LandInfo - They are separate companies, but strategic partners, with overlapping data.

• INTEC pricing: $600/DEM normally, takes 9 to cover the country
  $300/road layer, rasters are $100 each

East View Geospatial - Latin America, COSTA RICA Geospatial Data

• as of March 2003: "The DEM coverage that does exist is only scattered along the western coast, at 30 m resolution.  The coverage we have for whole country is 3 arc seconds resolution, derived from 500k mapping.  Price per block for this is $300, 11 blocks required for country coverage."

Misc:

• USGS Digital Data Series
  a. Subject: physical sciences
  b. Call no.: 3701s C1 VAR .U5 DDS# CD
  DDS-19: Geology and resource assessment of Costa Rica
• One person reported acquiring decent 1:50,000 scale topographical maps, similar to a USGS survey, of remote areas of Costa Rica, showing elevations at 20 meter intervals. They purchased these maps from a company Omni Maps

General maps:

• Complete Tourist Maps for Costa Rica
• Costa Rica maps from Omni Resources - International Map & Guidebook Specialists
• Major Volcanoes in Costa Rica