Abstract: In order to overcome the crack,imprecision of geographic analysis and data redundancy caused by the traditional digital elevation model in modeling the large scale terrain, this paper presents a method of global digital elevation modeling based on hierarchical subdivision of the quaternary triangular mesh on ellipsoidal surface. This method not only eliminates the gap and imprecision of geographic analysis caused by map projection, but also reduce the data redundancy. The authors has used the global GTOPO30 data to prove the reliability of the proposed method.