How to Download GADM Data Version 3.6 and Make It Work in Your GIS Workflow
If you downloaded the whole world GeoPackage (~2.5 GB), you can extract only Level 1 for the Americas:
Chapter 4: The Search and Selection
- Licensing: check GADM’s license and citation requirements before redistribution or publication.
- Versioning: v3.6 is a snapshot—boundaries change over time. For longitudinal work, record the version used.
- File sizes: whole-world shapefiles and gpkg can be very large; prefer country-level downloads when possible.
- Attribute consistency: field names can differ across admin levels; inspect the attribute table before scripting joins.
Step 3 – Choose country or global
