Maps
Topography & Bathymetry of South Africa
The maps below combine the digital elevation model (DEM) or topography of the land surface with the offshore bathymetry (water depth in shades of blue). The topography (DEM) is courtesy of Computamaps (now LuxCarta) and the bathymetry is from Willem de Wet’s 2013 MSc thesis. The Computamaps topography is not available for download, but you can download the SRTM 30 m resolution — 1 ARC Second topography dataset from the US Geological Survey.
The shelf bathymetry dataset from Willem de Wet’s 2013 MSc thesis is available for download as a zip file (28 MB in size) – click here to download the georef bathymetry dataset zip file. The deeper water bathymetry is available from the NOAA website (Amante C, Eakins B, 2009, ETOPO1 – 1 arc-minute global relief model: procedures, data sources and analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum, NESDIS NGDC 24:19 pp) – click here for link to NOAA site.
If you would like to learn more about the offshore bathymetry you can click here to download ‘Bathymetry of the South African continental shelf’ by Willem de Wet and John Compton (Geo-Marine Letters (2021) 41:40) and click here to download a pdf of Willem de Wet’s 2013 MSc thesis.
The map below is the same as the one above, but with the major features labelled. The dashed area encloses the Cape Fold Belt and Cederberg Mountains.
The map below uses the same datasets as the map above, but covers a larger area. However, the Computamaps dataset does not include Namibia, whose topography in the upper left corner is from the USGS SRTM 30 m dataset. The inset map of Africa is from the NOAA website’s ETOPO1 – 1 arc-minute global relief model.
