Natural Earth — Coastline and Land/Ocean masks Realisation of Coastline

Leaf: Coastline Dataset: Natural Earth — Coastline and Land/Ocean masks

Natural Earth provides the most widely used public-domain global coastline at three generalisation levels. It is appropriate for global-to-regional mapping and spatial analysis at scales where high-precision coastal surveys are not required.

Scale selection guide

Scale	Shapefile	Use case
1:10m	ne_10m_coastline.shp	Regional analysis, national-level maps, coastal context overlays
1:50m	ne_50m_coastline.shp	Continental overview, medium-scale thematic maps
1:110m	ne_110m_coastline.shp	Global visualisation, small-scale reference maps

Python load

import geopandas as gpd
 
# Coastline as LineString (all scales follow same pattern)
coastline = gpd.read_file("ne_10m_coastline.shp")
 
# Land as Polygon (useful for land/sea masking)
land = gpd.read_file("ne_10m_land.shp")
 
# Ocean as Polygon
ocean = gpd.read_file("ne_10m_ocean.shp")
 
# Clip to a bounding box
bbox = (5.0, 54.0, 16.0, 58.0)  # roughly Denmark + neighbours
coastline_clip = coastline.cx[bbox[0]:bbox[2], bbox[1]:bbox[3]]

Key attributes (ne_10m_coastline)

Field	Meaning
featurecla	Feature class (Coastline)
scalerank	Visibility rank (lower = more prominent)
min_zoom	Suggested minimum display zoom level

Available companion layers

Layer	Geometry	Use
ne_10m_land	Polygon	Land mask
ne_10m_ocean	Polygon	Ocean mask
ne_10m_coastline	LineString	Coastline line
ne_10m_minor_islands	Polygon	Small islands not in main land polygon
ne_10m_reefs	LineString	Reef features near coast