We’ve added eight new public baselayer maps to MapBox.com based on popular raster datasets. Our data sources are Natural Earth, which provides a bright, clean, illustrative style of map, and NASA’s Blue Marble imagery, which is derived from satellite photography composited over the course of 2004.

Our aim with these maps is to save the steps of downloading, processing, and rendering large amounts of data so users can instead focus on whatever borders, labels, or other data their map requires. TileStream subscribers can use the built-in map builder to quickly add these baselayers to their custom designs. The tiles can also be brought into any Modest Maps, OpenLayers, or Google Maps API embed (made even easier by our wax library).

Natural Earth II

The Natural Earth I design includes ocean bathymetry and hillshades, with coloring based on landcover data. Natural Earth II is similar, but the coloring reflects what landcover might look like if the Earth were not influenced by humans.

The Natural Earth Cross-blended Hypsometric map colors land based on elevation, but with considerations made to the climate of a given area so that the color more closely represents reality. There is also a version with bathymetry visualized in the oceans.

Blue Marble Topography (January)

There are four Blue Marble tilesets — two with bathymetry data and two without. For each of the two ocean styles, there is a January and a July version for your choice of snowiness.

Check out these along with all of our public tilesets on MapBox.com.