Adam Engst of TidBITS: “I’ve been working with mapping services a lot of late and wanted to share some of my experiences in the hope that they’ll help you boost your mapping game beyond simple navigation.” Mostly focuses on fitness-related mapping, but also on how to correct errors on online maps.
Month: February 2022
The News Media Maps the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
In a Twitter thread, Lisa Charlotte Muth provides a comprehensive list of maps and infographics about the Russian invasion of Ukraine produced by news organizations.
Alaskan Ice in Retreat
This NASA Earth Observatory video looks at the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia Glacier since 1986. Transcript here.
Air-Raid Shelters in Kyiv
The city of Kyiv has posted a map of public air-raid shelters in the Ukrainian capital, including basements and cellars, metro stations, underground parking, even underpasses. [Politico EU]
Hardyng’s Map of Scotland On Display
John Hardyng’s map of Scotland is now on display at the University of St. Andrews’s Wardlaw Museum. The 15th-century map was the first to show Scotland in any detail; it was included in Hardyng’s 1457 chronicle, in which he hoped to make the case for an English invasion of Scotland. Held by the British Library, the map is being made available via the Library’s Treasures on Tour program. It’s at the Wardlaw Museum until 3 July 2022. More from the University’s press release and the British Library.
A Crowdsourced Map of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map “is a crowdsourced effort to map, document and verify information in order to provide reliable information for policymakers and journalists of the on-the-ground and online situation in and around Ukraine. […] The pins on this map represents open source material such as videos, photos and imagery that have been cross-referenced with satellite imagery to determine precise locations of military activity.” It’s produced by the Centre for Information Resilience. [Boing Boing]
Lego’s New Globe
If Lego’s 11,695-piece world map was not enough for you—and believe me, I understand—then they have something else for you: a 2,585-piece globe that’s 40 cm (16 inches) tall, comes with glow-in-the-dark labels, and costs US$200/
William Clark Implicated in Land Grab by Map Re-Attributed to Him
A new historical study reattributes a rough sketch of treaty lines in what is now Missouri to William Clark (of “Lewis and” fame), implicating the legendary explorer in the dispossession of some 10.5 million acres of land assigned by treaty to indigenous peoples. The article by Cambridge historian Robert Lee, who studies Indigenous dispossession in the 19th century and discovered the map misfiled in another fonds, appears in the latest issue of William and Mary Quarterly. The DOI doesn’t appear to work yet, nor is the article available online at this point, but here’s the abstract and the press release.
The Map Books of 2022 page is now live. At the moment only a few books are listed—it’s only February, after all—but this is where my worldly and erudite readers come in. If you know of a book coming out this year that ought to be on this page—basically, any and all books about cartography, maps and related subjects—please let me know. It’s best if the book has a publisher listing and publication date (though I’m well aware that dates can move around a lot); I’ll work with what I can get, though.
The Rise and Fall of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai
A storymap from Esri’s Robert Waterman, based on Maxar satellite imagery, shows the rise and fall of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha‘apai from being two separate islands before a 2015 eruption combined them, through its time as an apparently stable but awkwardly compound-named single island until it got blown apart last month.
Previously: Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, Before and After.
Looking for Lightning, Finding Meteors
It turns out that the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) aboard the GOES-16 and GOES-17 earth observing satellites can do more than just detect lightning—it can also detect bolides, or very bright meteors, thanks to a new automatic detection algorithm. NASA Earth Observatory: “The map above shows the distribution of more than 3,000 bolides detected by the GLMs aboard GOES-16 and GOES-17 between July 2017 and January 2022. Blue points are bolides detected by GOES-16; pink points were detected by GOES-17. The lone pink point over the Atlantic Ocean was detected by GOES-17 during its commissioning phase before it was moved into its operational orbit over the West Coast.” (Bolides in the middle of the map are detected by both, and as you can see there’s a bit of parallax.)
xkcd: The Goode Homolosine to the Rescue!
Randall Munroe’s map projection humour is increasingly on point, as last Friday’s xkcd demonstrates. (The mouseover text is even better: “There are two rules on this ship: Never gaze back into the projection abyss, and never touch the red button labeled DYMAXION.”)
Previously: xkcd: The Greenland Special; xkcd: All South Americas; Blame the Mercator Projection; xkcd’s Time Zone Map; xkcd’s Liquid Resize Map Projection.
David Rumsey Map Collection: More Than Just Digitization
The David Rumsey Map Collection has a blog post that explains that they do more than just scan old maps.
When we digitize historical maps we create copies that can be shared and used by all. But we also create the potential to repurpose these copies to advance understanding of the original maps. To do this, we create composite maps, georeferenced maps, composite views, interactive globes, composite texts and other types of digital versions that expand map interpretation and enhance use. Below are some examples of these interpretive maps that we have created over the past 20 years. To date we have created 1,674 interpretive composite maps, views, and texts as well as over 56,000 georeferenced maps.
Examples at the blog post—some of which we’ve already seen, including the digital assembly of Urbano Monte’s 1587 world map (above).
Online Exhibition: Multiple Middles
An online exhibition from the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press, Multiple Middles: Maps from Early Modern Times features a selection of early modern maps and travel narratives from their special collections. “The exhibition takes narratives from the maps’ edges and repositions them as possible middles. As a result, previously unfamiliar histories and visual elements come to the fore. These objects highlight specific innovations, scientific theories, and geographical middles that their makers intentionally framed. The exhibition provides an alternate view of maps and early modern cartography.” Features many familiar cartographers (e.g. Blaeu, Ortelius). [WMS]
The Atlantic on the Board of Geographic Names
The Atlantic’s David A. Graham looks at the history and painstaking deliberation of the Board of Geographic Names. “Usually, the public eye is far from the BGN, a member of the class of government bodies whose work you could go a lifetime without thinking about, even though it’s all around you. But the board now finds itself in the middle of the fiery national debate over racism and language. In recent years, the BGN has spent more of its time reconsidering offensive names than doing anything else, but the process typically takes months and is reactive by design, with names considered case by case upon request.” [MAPS-L]
Previously: Secretary Haaland Takes Action Against Derogatory Place Names.