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---
title: Bathymetry
description: Underwater depth features in the base theme and how their coverage is defined
pagination_label: Base Bathymetry
---

# Bathymetry

The base theme's **bathymetry** feature type provides topographic representations of underwater areas, such as parts of lake beds or ocean floors. The geometries are derived from vectorized bathymetric data products built from [ETOPO1](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model) and [GLOBathy](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01132-9) data.

Bathymetry features carry Polygon or MultiPolygon geometries and a single classifying property, `depth`, which gives the depth level of the feature in meters below the water surface. See the [bathymetry schema reference](/schema/reference/base/bathymetry/) for the full column definitions.

## Stacked depth levels

Bathymetry is delivered as a set of **stacked depth levels**. Each depth level is a coverage polygon set: the features with `depth = d` together cover every point of the earth's surface where the water is **deeper than** `d` meters.

Practically, this means entities with a lower `depth` will always totally cover entities with a higher `depth`:

- `depth = 0` covers all water — oceans and the lakes captured by GLOBathy.
- `depth = 200` covers only the water that is deeper than 200 m.
- `depth = 4000` covers only the water that is deeper than 4000 m.

A point on the ocean floor at 3,500 m depth is therefore covered by every level from 0 up to the deepest level shallower than 3,500 m. Land is not covered by any level.
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To render a classic bathymetric tint map, draw the levels stacked from shallow to deep: paint `depth = 0` first in the lightest color, then paint each successively deeper level on top in a darker color. The `cartography.sort_key` property encodes this recommended stacking — features with a lower `sort_key` should be drawn in front of features with a higher `sort_key`. To extract a single disjoint depth *band* instead (for example, water between 200 m and 1000 m deep), subtract the deeper level's coverage from the shallower level's coverage.

## Takeaways

- **Land is not covered.** Bathymetry polygons only exist over water; no masking against land or water layers is needed.
- **Geometries are grid chips.** Instead of a small number of world-spanning multipolygons, each depth level is delivered as many polygons chipped to a roughly 1° grid, the same way Overture's ocean water polygons are delivered. Spatial filters (for example, `bbox` predicates) are much more effective as a result.
- **Semantics are "deeper than."** A feature with `depth = d` means "the water here is deeper than `d` meters," and levels overlap by design. Count on multiple features covering the same point — one per depth level shallower than the water at that point.

## Data access

Bathymetry data is available at:

| provider | location |
| --- | --- |
| Amazon S3 | `s3://overturemaps-us-west-2/release/<release>/theme=base/type=bathymetry/*` |
| Azure Blob Storage | `https://overturemapswestus2.blob.core.windows.net/release/<release>/theme=base/type=bathymetry/*` |

See the [base guide overview](./index.mdx) for general information about the base theme, including licensing and release cadence.
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## In this guide

This overview covers the feature types, dataset construction, and access for the base theme. A dedicated page covers one feature type in more depth:
This overview covers the feature types, dataset construction, and access for the base theme. Dedicated pages cover some feature types in more depth:

- **[Bathymetry](./bathymetry):** Underwater depth features — how the stacked "deeper-than" depth levels work, how the coverage is built, and what it means for rendering and querying.
- **[Infrastructure](./infrastructure):** Transit features such as bus stops, platforms, and stations — including how they relate to the places and transportation themes — and entities like mountains that appear in both base and places by design, with example queries.

## Dataset description
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There are six feature types in the base theme:

#### Bathymetry
Bathymetry features provide topographic representations of underwater areas, such as parts of lake beds or ocean floors. The geometries are derived vectorized bathymetric data products from [ETOPO1](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model) and [GLOBathy](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01132-9) data.
Bathymetry features provide topographic representations of underwater areas, such as parts of lake beds or ocean floors. The geometries are derived vectorized bathymetric data products from [ETOPO1](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model) and [GLOBathy](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01132-9) data. Bathymetry is delivered as stacked depth levels, where each feature with `depth = d` covers all water deeper than `d` meters; see the [bathymetry page](./bathymetry) for details.

#### Infrastructure
Infrastructure features provide basic information about real-world infrastructure entities such as bridges, airports, runways, aerialways, communication towers, and power lines. All of the features are pulled from OpenStreetMap and converted to the Overture schema. See the [infrastructure page](./infrastructure) for a closer look at transit features and how the infrastructure type relates to other themes.
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collapsed: true,
items: [
'guides/base/index',
'guides/base/bathymetry',
'guides/base/infrastructure',
],
},
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