Month: March 2022

Nineteen

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In other news, today is The Map Room’s 19th anniversary.

It hasn’t been a continuous run: it was on hiatus between June 2011 and January 2016 (the map content I posted to my personal blog during that time has since been brought over). But still, it’s been a lot: approaching something like 6,200 blog posts as of this writing. It’s kind of staggering, in hindsight.

If you’re moved to support The Map Room financially, you can do so via Ko-Fi or my hosting provider. It’s very much appreciated, and will help keep things going.

Review: North American Maps for Curious Minds

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Book cover: North American Maps for Curious MindsNorth American Maps for Curious Minds, written by Matthew Bucklan and Victor Cizek and featuring maps and illustrations by Jack Dunnington, is the second book in the Maps for Curious Minds series: Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds came out in 2019, and Wild Maps for Curious Minds is scheduled to come out this fall. The formula appears to be the same across all three books: 100 maps and infographics, divided by theme into chapters. In the case of North American Maps for Curious Minds, the 100 maps are sorted into seven chapters: Geography; Politics and Power; Nature; Culture and Sports; People and Populations; Lifestyle and Health; and Industry and Transport.

The series is a spinoff of the Brilliant Maps website, and can be seen as an attempt to render viral map memes in book form: if this book is any indication, the maps themselves are the sort that tend to get shared across social media platforms. One I recognized right away was no. 8: the first country you’ll reach going east or west from every point on the coast. Their appearance between hard covers is to be honest a bit unexpected, and to be honest, the translation from screen to page doesn’t always work.

Continue reading “Review: North American Maps for Curious Minds” →

Maps and Literature Updates: Two Exhibitions and an Article

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Osher’s fantasy map exhibition, North of Nowhere, West of the Moon: Myth, Fiction, and Fantasy in Maps, is now online—though a number of the exhibition’s maps are unavailable to view, I’m guessing for copyright reasons1 (previously).

Last month, MapLab’s Laura Bliss interviewed the Huntington’s curator of literary collections, Karla Nielsen, about the Huntington’s Mapping Fiction exhibition (previously).

The text of my article “Maps in Science Fiction” is now available online (previously).

Mapping Daylight Saving Time

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Daylight saving time has been in the news again, with the U.S. Senate voting to make it permanent year-round. So it’s worth looking at maps that explore the impact of standard time and daylight saving time, and time zones in general, on the time of sunrise and sunset. And as far as the United States is concerned, that means looking at some maps by Andy Woodruff, who’s been exploring this question since at least this 2015 blog post. Which was supplanted in 2019 by this so-called gripe assistant tool to help you quantify your whining about the biannual change.

Map of optimal time zone boundaries (Andy Woodruff)
Andy Woodruff, Axis Maps (Twitter)

Finally, last week Andy produced the above infographic to illustrate your ideal time zone based on when you think your ideal sunrise and sunset is.

See also CityLab’s coverage (now subscriber-only), which is pretty Woodruff-heavy.

Mapping the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Roundup #3

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Financial Times has a storymap exploring how Russian mistakes and unexpectedly stiff Ukrainian resistance changed the expected outcome of the war. [Maps Mania]

Bellingcat has launched a map showing civilian harm in Ukraine. “Included in the map are instances where civilian areas and infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed, where the presence of civilian injuries are visible and/or there is the presence of immobile civilian bodies. […] We intend this to be a living project that will continue to be updated as long as the conflict persists.”

In a Twitter thread, Levi Westerfeld explores how the New York Times graphics department changed its map symbology as the Russian invasion progressed.

In another Twitter thread, Nathan Ruser (see roundups passim) shares a variety of maps showing different ways of looking at the invasion, from momentum to front lines to territory held.

Historic England’s Aerial Photo Explorer

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Historic England’s new Aerial Photo Explorer allows users access to an archive of some 400,000 digitized aerial photographs taken over the past century. From their announcement: “Aerial imagery provides a fascinating insight into the development and expansion of the nation’s urban centres and changes to the rural landscape. It can also reveal striking discoveries—such as ‘cropmarks’ showing hidden, archaeology beneath the surface.” I notice that it also includes aerial photos of World War II bomb damage.

The Tolkien Estate’s New Website Includes Manuscript Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Tolkien Estate now has a website, which among other things includes J. R. R. Tolkien’s own paintings, illustrations—and maps. But the maps aren’t from the published editions of The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion: those were drawn by his son Christopher. These are Tolkien’s own maps, drawn during the writing process. We see rough sketches of Arda, originals of the Hobbit maps, and the maps of Middle-earth that grew and changed as he wrote The Lord of the Rings. [Kottke]

Indigenous Content Added to Climate Atlas of Canada

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CBC News reports on the launch of an Indigenous Knowledges component to the Climate Atlas of Canada:

Until now, the interactive atlas did not show climate change projections for Indigenous communities. Only Canadian urban centres were included.

The newly-launched feature provides information about the impacts of climate change on 634 First Nations communities and 53 Inuit communities, while also profiling projects surrounding climate change adaptation and mitigation across the Métis homeland.

The Climate Atlas has a video demo of its Indigenous content. The Atlas’s online map, with Indigenous layers, is here.

Saharan Dust in Western Europe

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Map showing dust plumes from Africa spreading across Europe
NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens

A dust plume from the Sahara, driven by an atmospheric river, blew across western Europe this week, and friends from Spain to Germany experienced it. NASA Earth Observatory has satellite imagery of the plume, plus maps (above) showing “a model of the dust plumes blowing across North Africa and into Europe on March 14 and 15. The model was generated by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5), a global atmospheric model that uses mathematical equations to represent physical processes. Measurements of physical properties like temperature, moisture, and wind speeds and directions are routinely folded into the model to keep the simulation as close to observed reality as possible.”

Crossings: An Exhibition at the Newberry Library

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Crossings: Mapping American Journeys, is an exhibition at Chicago’s Newberry Library that explores cross-country journeys of various kinds.

Maps, guidebooks, travelogues, postcards, and more from the Newberry’s collection recreate travelers’ experiences along the northern and southern borders of the US, across the continent’s interior, and up and down the Mississippi River.

These cross-country paths have been in use for centuries whether by water, railroad, car, or airplane. And they’ve remained remarkably consistent despite changes in transportation, commerce, and the people who’ve used them.

But not everyone has experienced travel and mobility equally. The same paths meant “discovery” to the European explorer, freedom to the enslaved, and loss and removal for Indigenous nations.

Crossings shows how centuries of movement—from the Lewis and Clark expedition to the American road trip—have forged deep relationships between people and places that survive to this day.

Crossings opened on February 25 and runs until June 25. Free admission; masks required.

‘The People Who Draw Rocks’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Melting glaciers are keeping a special team of cartographers at Swisstopo, Switzerland’s national mapping agency, busy: they’re the ones charged with making changes to the Swiss alps on Swisstopo’s maps. The New York Times reports:

“The glaciers are melting, and I have more work to do,” as Adrian Dähler, part of that special group, put it.

Dähler is one of only three cartographers at the agency—the Federal Office of Topography, or Swisstopo—allowed to tinker with the Swiss Alps, the centerpiece of the country’s map. Known around the office as “felsiers,” a Swiss-German nickname that loosely translates as “the people who draw rocks,” Dähler, along with Jürg Gilgen and Markus Heger, are experts in shaded relief, a technique for illustrating a mountain (and any of its glaciers) so that it appears three-dimensional. Their skills and creativity also help them capture consequences of the thawing permafrost, like landslides, shifting crevasses and new lakes.

The article is a fascinating look at an extraordinarily exacting aspect of cartography. [WMS]

How Maps of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Can Mislead

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Writing in Foreign Policy, Mateusz Fafinski looks at maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, their disconnect with facts on the ground, and their use in propaganda. “Numerous news outlets and analysts produce maps of the war in Ukraine. These maps tend to follow a similar pattern. Areas of Russian advances get colored in red, sometimes augmented with arrows signifying the direction of Russian movements. Those areas are variously described as ‘areas occupied’ or ‘areas taken.’ At face value, these maps tell a story of significant Russian progress and control. But reports from the ground tell a more nuanced story.”

For context, see previous posts: Mapping the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Roundup; Mapping the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Roundup #2.