I'm pretty sure that a lot of people might have faced the situation where they search the internet for geographical basemaps on a global scale but can't hardly find the needed data in a short time and with sufficient quality and/or documentation.
I think especially for beginners it is hard to know where to download good data because their are just too many websites and data-sources out there of which some are for free and others are not, some are of good quality and others not…and often all of them lack proper documentation.
So my question is: Is there any specific website that bundles information on where to find good basemaps (such as administrational boundaries, cities, physical maps, relief maps, waterbodies, vegetation, soil and others) on a global scale that also include proper documentation and reliable data-quality?
For me a good starting point is Worldgrids.org. check out here:
http://worldgrids.org/doku.php
people interestet in soils should consider:
some layers from the FAO:
http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home
(If you go to the portal make sure to do the advanced search and click on downloadable data as a filter option)
Best Answer
http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ has boundaries and stuff but it is all on a pretty low resolution.
http://www.weogeo.com/ has several free datasets including openstreet map, as well some for pay.