Introduction

Geographical scale, in terms of spatial extent, provide a basis for other branches of science. This dataset contains newly proposed geographical and geological GIS boundaries for the Pan-Tibetan Highlands (new proposed name for the High Mountain Asia), based on geological and geomorphological features. This region comprises the Tibetan Plateau and three adjacent mountain regions: the Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains and Mountains of Central Asia, and boundaries are also given for each subregion individually. The dataset will benefit quantitative spatial analysis by providing a well-defined geographical scale for other branches of research, aiding cross-disciplinary comparisons and synthesis, as well as reproducibility of research results.

The dataset comprises three subsets, and we provide three data formats (.shp, .geojson and .kmz) for each of them. Shapefile format (.shp) was generated in ArcGIS Pro, and the other two were converted from shapefile, the conversion steps refer to 'Data processing' section below. The following is a description of the three subsets:

(1) The GIS boundaries we newly defined of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands and its four constituent sub-regions, i.e. the Tibetan Plateau, Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains and the Mountains of Central Asia. All files are placed in the "Pan-Tibetan Highlands (Liu et al._2022)" folder.

(2) We also provide GIS boundaries that were applied by other studies (cited in Fig. 3 of our work) in the folder "Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountains (Others’ definitions)". If these data is used, please cite the relevent paper accrodingly. In addition, it is worthy to note that the GIS boundaries of Hengduan Mountains (Li et al. 1987a) and Mountains of Central Asia (Foggin et al. 2021) were newly generated in our study using Georeferencing toolbox in ArcGIS Pro.

(3) Geological assemblages and characters of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands, including Cratons and micro-continental blocks (Fig. S1), plus sutures, faults and thrusts (Fig. 4), are placed in the "Pan-Tibetan Highlands (geological files)" folder.

Note: High Mountain Asia: The name ‘High Mountain Asia’ is the only direct synonym of Pan-Tibetan Highlands, but this term is both grammatically awkward and somewhat misleading, and hence the term ‘Pan-Tibetan Highlands’ is here proposed to replace it. Third Pole: The first use of the term ‘Third Pole’ was in reference to the Himalaya by Kurz & Montandon (1933), but the usage was subsequently broadened to the Tibetan Plateau or the whole of the Pan-Tibetan Highlands. The mainstream scientific literature refer the ‘Third Pole’ to the region encompassing the Tibetan Plateau, Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains, Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Pamir. This definition was surpported by geological strcture (Main Pamir Thrust) in the western part, and generally overlaps with the ‘Tibetan Plateau’ sensu lato defined by some previous studies, but is more specific.

More discussion and reference about names please refer to the paper. The figures (Figs. 3, 4, S1) mentioned above were attached in the end of this document.

Data processing

We provide three data formats. Conversion of shapefile data to kmz format was done in ArcGIS Pro. We used the Layer to KML tool in Conversion Toolbox to convert the shapefile to kmz format. Conversion of shapefile data to geojson format was done in R. We read the data using the shapefile function of the raster package, and wrote it as a geojson file using the geojson_write function in the geojsonio package.

Version

Version 2022.1.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB31010000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41971071), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (ZDBS-LY-7001). We are grateful to our coauthors insightful discussion and comments. We also want to thank professors Jed Kaplan, Yin An, Dai Erfu, Zhang Guoqing, Peter Cawood, Tobias Bolch and Marc Foggin for suggestions and providing GIS files.

Citation

Liu, J., Milne, R. I., Zhu, G. F., Spicer, R. A., Wambulwa, M. C., Wu, Z. Y., Li, D. Z. (2022). Name and scale matters: Clarifying the geography of Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions. Global and Planetary Change, In revision

Jie Liu & Guangfu Zhu. (2022). Geographical and geological GIS boundaries of the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent mountain regions (Version 2022.1). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6432940

Contacts

Dr. Jie LIU: E-mail: liujie@mail.kib.ac.cn;

Mr. Guangfu ZHU: zhuguangfu@mail.kib.ac.cn

Institution: Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Address: 132# Lanhei Road, Heilongtan, Kunming 650201, Yunnan, China

Copyright

This dataset is available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

GIS2DJI is a Python 3 program created to exports GIS files to a simple kml compatible with DJI pilot. The software is provided with a GUI. GIS2DJI has been tested with the following file formats: gpkg, shp, mif, tab, geojson, gml, kml and kmz. GIS_2_DJI will scan every file, every layer and every geometry collection (ie: MultiPoints) and create one output kml or kmz for each object found. It will import points, lines and polygons, and converted each object into a compatible DJI kml file. Lines and polygons will be exported as kml files. Points will be converted as PseudoPoints.kml. A PseudoPoints fools DJI to import a point as it thinks it's a line with 0 length. This allows you to import points in mapping missions. Points will also be exported as Point.kmz because PseudoPoints are not visible in a GIS or in Google Earth. The .kmz file format should make points compatible with some DJI mission software.

This dataset contains shapefile boundaries for CA State, counties and places from the US Census Bureau's 2023 MAF/TIGER database. Current geography in the 2023 TIGER/Line Shapefiles generally reflects the boundaries of governmental units in effect as of January 1, 2023.

The Unpublished Digital Geologic Map of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Vicinity, Utah, Arizona is composed of GIS data layers complete with ArcMap 9.3 layer (.LYR) files, two ancillary GIS tables, a Map PDF document with ancillary map text, figures and tables, a FGDC metadata record and a 9.3 ArcMap (.MXD) Document that displays the digital map in 9.3 ArcGIS. These data formats also fully represent all of the features present on a GRI digital map, as well as containing related ancillary information GIS data tables. The data is also available as a 2.2 KMZ/KML file for use in Google Earth. Google Earth software is available for free at: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html. Users are encouraged to only use the Google Earth data for basic visualization, and to use the GIS data for any type of data analysis or investigation. The data were completed as a component of the Geologic Resources Inventory (GRI) program, a National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Division funded program that is administered by the NPS Geologic Resources Division (GRD). Source geologic maps and data used to complete this GRI digital dataset were provided by the following: Utah Geological Survey. Detailed information concerning the sources used and their contribution the GRI product are listed in the Source Citation sections(s) of this metadata record (glca_metadata.xml; available at http://nrdata.nps.gov/glca/nrdata/geology/gis/glca_metadata.xml). Users of this data are cautioned about the locational accuracy of features within this dataset. Based on the source map scale of 1:100,000 and United States National Map Accuracy Standards features are within (horizontally) 50.8 meters or 166.7 feet of their actual location as presented by this dataset. Users of this data should thus not assume the location of features is exactly where they are portrayed in Google Earth, ArcGIS or other software used to display this dataset. All GIS and ancillary tables were produced as per the NPS GRI Geology-GIS Geodatabase Data Model v. 2.1. (available at: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/inventory/geology/GeologyGISDataModel.cfm). The GIS data is available as a 9.3 personal geodatabase (glca_geology.mdb), and as shapefile (.SHP) and DBASEIV (.DBF) table files. The GIS data projection is NAD83, UTM Zone 12N, however, for the KML/KMZ format the data is projected upon export to WGS84 Geographic, the native coordinate system used by Google Earth. The data is within the area of interest of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, as well as Rainbow Bridge National Monument (RABR), Canyonlands National Park (CANY), Capitol Reef National Park (CARE) and Grand Canyon National Park (GRCA).

The LIA extent was identified and extracted using known techniques of band combinations in remote sensing but applied to look at a terrestrial landscape through a new lens. The marginal zone of the LIA is denoted by little or no vegetation, disturbed sediment, moraines, trimlines, little or no soil development and the exposed rock surfaces are unweathered. Sentinel 2 images were downloaded from USGS Earth Explorer from July- September 2021 to show the peak vegetation season. Scenes with less than 10% cloudiness were chosen. The band combination to identify the LIA extent is B11 (Short Wave Infrared: SWIR), B8 (Near Infrared: NIR), and B2 (Blue).

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The Unpublished Digital Surficial Geologic-GIS Map of Mount Desert Island and Vicinity, Acadia National Park, Maine is composed of GIS data layers and GIS tables in a 10.1 file geodatabase (acad_surficial_geology.gdb), a 10.1 ArcMap (.mxd) map document (acad_surficial_geology.mxd), individual 10.1 layer (.lyr) files for each GIS data layer, an ancillary map information document (acad_surficial_geology.pdf) which contains source map unit descriptions, as well as other source map text, figures and tables, metadata in FGDC text (.txt) and FAQ (.pdf) formats, and a GIS readme file (acad_geology_gis_readme.pdf). Please read the acad_geology_gis_readme.pdf for information pertaining to the proper extraction of the file geodatabase and other map files. To request GIS data in ESRI 10.1 shapefile format contact Stephanie O'Meara (stephanie.omeara@colostate.edu; see contact information below). The data is also available as a 2.2 KMZ/KML file for use in Google Earth, however, this format version of the map is limited in data layers presented and in access to GRI ancillary table information. Google Earth software is available for free at: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html. Users are encouraged to only use the Google Earth data for basic visualization, and to use the GIS data for any type of data analysis or investigation. The data were completed as a component of the Geologic Resources Inventory (GRI) program, a National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Division funded program that is administered by the NPS Geologic Resources Division (GRD). Source geologic maps and data used to complete this GRI digital dataset were provided by the following: Maine Geological Survey. Detailed information concerning the sources used and their contribution the GRI product are listed in the Source Citation section(s) of this metadata record (acad_surficial_geology_metadata.txt or acad_surficial_geology_metadata_faq.pdf). Users of this data are cautioned about the locational accuracy of features within this dataset. Based on the source map scale of 1:24,000 and United States National Map Accuracy Standards features are within (horizontally) 12.2 meters or 40 feet of their actual location as presented by this dataset. Users of this data should thus not assume the location of features is exactly where they are portrayed in Google Earth, ArcGIS or other software used to display this dataset. All GIS and ancillary tables were produced as per the NPS GRI Geology-GIS Geodatabase Data Model v. 2.3. (available at: https://www.nps.gov/articles/gri-geodatabase-model.htm). The GIS data projection is NAD83, UTM Zone 19N, however, for the KML/KMZ format the data is projected upon export to WGS84 Geographic, the native coordinate system used by Google Earth. The data is within the area of interest of Acadia National Park.