Clip raster using multiple country shapefiles

Question

I currently use gdalwarp to clip a GeoTIFF file using a single shapefile. However, I would like to have the option of creating a clipped GeoTIFF file using multiple countries together.

Is using GDAL the proper way to approach this?

Answer 1

If the countries are adjacent to each other you could first dissolve (see https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/85046/15183 ) using ogr2ogr and then use the dissolved polygon for clipping.

Answer 2

You can merge all cutline geometries in single shape file in one or separate features. Additionally you can use such command line options:

• -cwhere expression
• -csql query
• -cblend distance

For details see http://www.gdal.org/gdalwarp.html