Shaded Earth Map

Draws a path of the Earth with realistic colors.

DRAWEARTHSHADED Draws a shaded map of the Earth

DRAWEARTHSHADED Draw a map of the earth, with a realistic set of
colors. This can be used as a background for any map plot you wish.
It is important to note that the shapefiles "landareas" and
"usastateshi" are both used in order to generate this map. They are
both relatively coarse in their resolution and do not always line
up, so this may not be suitable for some situations (i.e. scales of
10s of kilometers near coastline).

DRAWEARTHSHADED(USAshaded,WorldShaded,Lakes) USAshaded toggles wether
or not the USA should be shaded and highlighted. WorldShaded toggles
wether of not the landareas shapefile ought to be drawn. Lakes toggles
wether of not the lakes should be colored in blue. By default, all 3 of
these values are on.

Example:
figure
drawEarthShaded
hold on
lat = 38.8904;
lon = -77.0320;
latlim = [-2 2] + lat;
lonlim = [-2 2] + lon;
plot(lon,lat,'rx')
text(lon,lat,' Washington DC')
axis([lonlim latlim])
if exist('lat_lon_proportions','file')
lat_lon_proportions
end
title('Washington DC - Bad Coastline')

figure
drawEarthShaded(1,0,1)
hold on
lat = 38.8904;
lon = -77.0320;
latlim = [-2 2] + lat;
lonlim = [-2 2] + lon;
plot(lon,lat,'rx')
text(lon,lat,' Washington DC')
axis([lonlim latlim])
if exist('lat_lon_proportions','file')
lat_lon_proportions
end
title('Washington DC - Better Coastline')

If you want your map to be proportioned correctly, call the function
lat_lon_proportions. This can be found on the File Exchange @
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32462

By: J Sullivan, May 2011