XYZ Tiles

This information is also included in tutorial 3, but is here seperately to make it easier to find.

XYZ tiles are layers comprised of multiple tiles that reside on a server and are made available to the public. When added to QGIS or another mapping service, what appears as a seamless map is actually a collection of many smaller images in a grid, delivered by a web server. The maps in Google Maps and other web mapping services are served as XYZ tiles. They are often useful for a quick basemap when exploring preliminary data, but as a general rule it is always good to eventually remove it and have just the right amount of information to communicate the purpose of the map.

Open Street Maps is an open geographic database contributed to by volunteers. Let's add the default OSM (Open Street Map) XYZ Tile in QGIS, to get a basemap of streets and buildings, among other features.

You can add XYZ tiles in the Browser Panel of QGIS. Right-click "XYZ Tiles" and select "New Connection". Give your new connection a name like "Open Street Map", and paste the following URL into the URL field:

https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

You should now see your entry for Open Street Maps if you expand the XYZ option in the browser panel. Drag this to your layers panel to add it to your QGIS project.

Other than the default Open Street Map raster tile, there are many more styles based off of that. Some notable ones are:

• Stamen Toner (black and white): http://a.tile.stamen.com/toner/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
• Stamen Terrain: http://a.tile.stamen.com/toner/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
• Mapbox Satellite: https://api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/mapbox/satellite-v9/tiles/256/{z}/{x}/{y}@2x?access_token=MAPBOX_TOKEN_HERE This one requires an access token, which you can get for free with a mapbox account. Instructions here

Resources compiled by Adam Vosburgh, Spring 2023.