# BKG VG250 federal-state geometry

Data: © [BKG](https://www.bkg.bund.de) 2026
[dl-de/by-2-0](https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0).
Dataset: VG250, dated **1 January 2026**, reference scale 1:250,000.

Source archive: https://daten.gdz.bkg.bund.de/produkte/vg/vg250_ebenen_0101/aktuell/vg250_01-01.utm32s.shape.ebenen.zip
Source archive SHA-256: a21bd17e3616fded6a1cae3311f6b0e8f156ba3939d113b8b760fec5664dd529
Acquired: 2026-10-19.

Original data sources: [BKG-VG250-DATA-SOURCES.pdf](BKG-VG250-DATA-SOURCES.pdf),
also published by BKG at https://sgx.geodatenzentrum.de/web_public/gdz/datenquellen/datenquellen_vg_nuts.pdf.
Original supplied terms: [BKG-VG250-TERMS.pdf](BKG-VG250-TERMS.pdf).
Full licence: [DL-DE-BY-2.0.txt](DL-DE-BY-2.0.txt).

Changes: selected the 16 GF=4 land-area records from VG250_LAN; transformed
EPSG:25832 to OGC:CRS84 longitude/latitude using GDAL ogr2ogr; emitted polygon
rings as GMT multi-segment lines and rounded coordinates to six decimals.
No geometric simplification or fitted-line smoothing was applied. Maritime
records are excluded. The NRW subset selects SN_L=05. Label positions are
authored for legibility and use the official LKZ abbreviations.

The converted linework is stored in examples/data/germany-laender.gmt and
examples/data/nrw.gmt; source and output hashes are in examples/data/provenance.json.
The BKG data and resulting geography retain the data licence above and are
excluded from this repository's CC0 dedication of original tutorial material.
GSHHG/WDBII and DCW are separate installed datasets; their -D resolution flags
do not refine this fixed BKG layer. The figures combine separate data snapshots.