NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Water Body Data Shapefiles & Raster Files V003

The Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is responsible for the archive and distribution of NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) SRTM, which includes the Water Body Data Shapefiles and Raster Files (~30 m) product. Version 3.0 contains the vectorized coastline masks used by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in the editing, called the SRTM Waterbody Data (SWBD), in shapefile and rasterized formats.

The NASA SRTM data sets result from a collaborative effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the NGA (previously known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA), as well as the participation of the German and Italian space agencies. This collaboration aims to generate a near-global digital elevation model (DEM) of Earth using radar interferometry. SRTM was the primary (and virtually only) payload on the STS-99 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which launched February 11, 2000 and flew for 11 days.

The SRTM swaths extended from ~30 degrees off-nadir to ~58 degrees off-nadir from an altitude of 233 kilometers (km), creating swaths ~225 km wide, and consisted of all land between 60° N and 56° S latitude to account for 80% of Earth's total landmass.

Known Issues * Known issues in the NASA SRTM are described in the following publication: * Rodriguez, E., C. S. Morris, and J. E. Belz (2006), A global assessment of the SRTM performance, Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 72, 249–260. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.72.3.249

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated June 3, 2026, 00:16 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 18:00 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id ac55cfd5-aaf1-4d04-83e3-e2d30cf3621e
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/MEASURES/SRTM/SRTMSWBD.003
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-06-01T22:16:01Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher LP DAAC;NASA/JPL/SRTM
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 857d5af0ae52f54063e78873c47e50f02edbe55be554c13b4bef9cc177253b34
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 60, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -56}]]
temporal 2000-02-11/2000-02-21
theme {"Earth Science"}