ESM 263 Geographic Information Systems

Basemaps for QGIS

CONTENTS

Having basemaps in the background of your maps is often helpful for orientation. A nice basemap may also make your map more visually appealing. Here are a few more sources of basemaps you can use in QGIS.

XYZ Tiles

We’ve already encountered OpenStreetMap, which comes built-in to the QGIS Browser as an XYZ Tiles layer:

Figure 1: OpenStreetMap

This stackexchange post (“No plugin required”) is a handy guide to adding some popular web map services to QGIS as XYZ Tiles, so you can use them as basemaps.

MapTiler

The company MapTiler provides a set of basemaps which can readily be used in QGIS. All you need to do is:

  1. Register with MapTiler

  2. Install the QGIS MapTiler plugin
    1. Go to Plugins→Manage and Install Plugins
    2. Search for MapTiler
    3. Click Install Plugin

      Figure 2: MapTiler plugin
      You can now find MapTiler layers in your QGIS Browser panel.
  3. The first time you use it, the plugin will ask for your account key in a popup. Copy your personal key from the MapTiler website to your plugin.
    • On your MapTiler account, go to Account→Keys

      Figure 3: Copy Key
    • Copy the key and paste it into the QGIS MapTiler plugin popup.

QuickMapServices

Another source of basemaps is the QuickMapServices plugin. You can install it at Plugins→Manage and Install Plugins. The plugin can then be accessed at Web→QuickMapServices.

You can get even more maps from QuickMapServices by adding the Contribute Pack. Go to Web→QuickMapServices→Settings→More services and click Get contributed pack. (Not all of these services work…)

NASA GIBS (WMS)