Maps Overview
Integrate snow maps in your web mapping application
DeFROST currently offers two different snow maps: one covering the European Alps and the other covering the entire globe. Both maps display the snow depth in centimeters.
The table below quickly summarizes both maps' main characteristics:
Spatial resolution
20 meters
375 meters
Update time
Daily at 3AM CET
Daily at 4PM CET
Tile zoom levels
13 zoom levels
9 zoom levels
Tile size
256x256 pixels
256x256 pixels
Snow depth color range
Light blue (#35e9e6) to Bright pink (#ff01fb)
Light blue (#35e9e6) to Bright pink (#ff01fb)
Covered area
Alpine Convention
66.5°N to 66.5°S
Both maps are served via their own Tile Map Service (TMS) based XYZ tiles endpoint, making it easy to display it as a layer on top of a basemap of choice, with any of the major web mapping libraries available today such as OpenLayers, Leaflet or Mapbox.
Map Legend
You can use the image below in your application so your users can interpret the snow depth seen on the map. Or feel free to use the JSON definition to programmatically display the range.
Maps Authentication: JSON Web Tokens
In the same way as the DeFROST API, access to the Maps is protected using the JSON Web Tokens (JWT) industry standard. This means that any request to the XYZ tile endpoints must be authenticated by passing a valid JWT token in the HTTP Authorization request header.
JWT is a highly secure, modern but relatively recent way of securing the access to a Tile Server, making it neccessary to write additional code in order to make it work with some web mapping libraries such as OpenLayers or Leaflet. The Mapbox library already supports JWT authentication method easily out of the box. However - we have already made that work for you:
You can check working code examples on either OpenLayers, Leaflet or Mapbox in the Development Quickstart section or the example project.
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