QGIS resources

About

I've always had trouble finding a site which has a large list of Qgis resources. When you're making maps as a hobby, finding resources - especially free ones - can be difficult. Which is why I've attempted to compile a list of as many helpful Qgis resources as possible

List

[copy & paste links into your browser, elevation data at the bottom]

General data

General-purpose collection of resources. Natural Earth is a great place to get data that lines up and is detailed
https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/

Lakes & Coastline (modern)
https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/ (click the link at the top)

QuickOSM is good for modern day data (cities, rivers, different types of roads and A LOT more), here's a guide to keys
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapfeatures, tutorials for how to use it exist online

HydroSHEDS: a very detailed database of Rivers, Basins and Lakes. (Note: May be too detailed, use the filter featue on QGIS)
https://www.hydrosheds.org/page/overview

Very useful library of GIS data of all sorts
https://data.humdata.org/dataset

Detailed Country-Level data for all sorts of things https://www.diva-gis.org/

Useful program for making custom projections for Qgis for your desired area https://projectionwizard.org/

Land cover data for the EU
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/clc-2000-vector-6

Very detailed data for China during 1820-1990_ by Harvard
https://chgis.fas.harvard.edu/data/chgis/v6/

Elevation

Topo data for the US
https://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/gdgorder.aspx
(Area of your choosing, whether it's following state boundaries or a square you drew)

Ocean floor & land data (not so detailed for land, you should use both it and another topo site)
https://download.gebco.net/

Topo data for land, not extremely detailed, covers the whole world
http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage%20map%20viewfinderpanoramasorg15.htm

Topo data for land, 5 times higher resolution than the one above, only use for small regions
http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage%20map%20viewfinderpanoramasorg3.htm

30m Topographic data even more detailed than the one above, (covering all of the world, except Antarctica), pretty decently sized download squares https://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/srtmdata/

Detailed Bathymetry (not really recommended unless map specifically focuses on Bathymetry)
https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/73963/bathymetry

Programs for generalising topography (uses ESRI ASCII GRID files. The .asc files)
http://terraincartography.com/terrainsculptor/ [GEBCO works best for data]
OR
http://terraincartography.com/PyramidShader/ - I recommend this one [GEBCO works best for data]