except that the basemap's roads, political boundaries and labels cannot be removed. Are there any basemaps that have natural features (veg, wetlands, hydro) and coarse-scale contour lines but NOT roads, powerlines and political boundaries?
At this point I would gladly accept a layer with only natural/physical features as I can add contours myself.
Well if you are only looking for natural features a landcover dataset might be best for you. This will only have vegatation classes and such. No roads or boundaries
I've started thinking I will need to create my own basemap. Ideally I would have a higher resolution land-cover classification, contour line layer, wetlands and water layer. Attainable but the base maps I've seen are so close yet so far.
