Writing at The Conversation, geographers Derek Alderman and Joshua Inwood explore African American examples of “counter-mapping,” from maps made by the Black Panthers proposing new police districts to modern interactive maps of lynchings and police violence. “Black Americans were among the earliest purveyors of counter-mapping, deploying this alternative cartography to serve a variety of needs a century ago.” [Osher]
Previously: ‘Counter-Mapping’ the Amazon.
The 100 millionth edit to OpenStreetMap was uploaded today, the OpenStreetMap Blog reports. “This milestone represents the collective contribution of nearly 1 billion features globally in the past 16+ years, by a diverse community of over 1.5 million mappers.”
National Geographic looks at the rivalry between two early cartographers of Mars who based their maps on observations made during Mars’s “Great Opposition” in 1877: Nathaniel Green, whose Mars “was a delicately shaded world with landforms that gradually rose from vast plains and features that blended into one another” (pictured here) and Giovanni Schiaparelli, whose Mars had more detail—including those famous canals—but was less accurate.
A new study maps the possible locations of subsurface water-ice reservoirs, vital for any crewed missions. [Sky & Telescope]
Kenneth Field’s virtual globe of Mars follows in the footsteps of his 2016 map.
Interactive maps showing the locations and paths of the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. [Maps Mania]
Kenneth Field has released a dasymetric dot density map of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results. One dot equals one vote. “Data at a county level has been reapportioned to urban areas. Dots are positioned randomly.” It’s in the same vein as his 2016 map, which went all kinds of viral when he posted it in early 2018. A high-resolution downloadable poster is here; an interactive version is here.
Previously: Kenneth Field’s Dot Density Election Map; Kenneth Field’s Dot Density Election Map Redux.
Penn State University Libraries’ collection of Pennsylvania Sanborn fire insurance maps dates to 1925, which means that as of this year they’re in the public domain—and freely available to use. Meanwhile, Maps Mania has a roundup of other fire insurance maps resources. The Library of Congress has a collection of 50,000 Sanborn atlases, 35,000 of which are available online (collections, navigator). In the United Kingdom, fire insurance maps were produced by Charles E. Goad Ltd.; Goad maps are available via the British Library and the National Library of Scotland.
Fire insurance maps are an invaluable resource for historical researchers: they’re extremely detailed snapshots of the built environment of virtually every city and town, and there are usually several such snapshots (I’ve seen at least three for my little village, for example), so you can chart a town’s growth over time at a level of detail an OS, quad or topo map can’t match.
Google explains how they identify and take action against fraudulent content—fake reviews, fake listings, content vandalism—on Google Maps.
Meanwhile, the ability to pay for parking and transit fares is being integrated into the Google Maps app (Engadget, The Verge).
On the Apple Maps front, cycling directions have come to Portland, Oregon and San Diego, and turn-by-turn navigation has been expanded in the United Arab Emirates.
The Map Books of 2021 page is now live, but at the moment it has very few books listed. If there’s a book coming out in 2021 that should be on this page—basically, any and all books about cartography, maps and related subjects—please let me know. Ideally books should have a publication date (though I’m well aware that dates can move around a lot) and other details available, but I’ll work with what I can get.
Crowdsourced incident reporting—a feature already available in Google Maps and Waze—is coming to Apple Maps: the beta release of iOS 14.5 enables users to report accidents, road hazards and speed checks, with Siri and CarPlay integration. More at CNet’s Roadshow and MacRumors, among others; the final, public release of iOS 14.5 should come out some time in the spring, I think.
So this animation went viral last week:
Pretty amazing full plate tectonic animation of the last billion years from @AndrewMerdith – Merdith et al. 2021 (Earth Science Reviews) @MullerDietmar @EarthByteGroup @UniAdelSciences https://t.co/Plne1y1Qm7 pic.twitter.com/IIFGRaZ3vD
— Alan Collins (@geoAlanC) January 29, 2021
It shows the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates over the past billion years, and it was posted by one of the co-authors of this study proposing a new, single model of plate tectonic activity that covers the past billion years of Earth’s existence. (Previous models, if I understand the abstract correctly, covered shorter periods—for several-hundred-million-year values of short—and didn’t line up with each other.)
Late last year Dan Ford launched a Kickstarter to create a board book (i.e., a children’s book printed on paperboard) about map projections called Map Projections for Babies. Presumably intended to be in the same vein as other board books on surprisingly advanced science topics (Chris Ferrie has a whole series of them; Quantum Computing for Babies is a typical title), Map Projections for Babies “explains how we unwrap the round Earth to make flat maps. This guide for babies (and their loved ones) describes a complex concept in kid-friendly terms. […] This project began last year, when I was inspired threefold by my daughter’s curiosity, my love for maps, and a growing number of board books that condense complex concepts for babies.” The Kickstarter was successful, the book is now at the printing stage and is on track for delivery in April; additional orders will be accepted at some point. [Geography Realm]
The New York Times maps the distribution of COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles. “County officials recently estimated that one in three of Los Angeles County’s roughly 10 million people have been infected with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. But even amid an uncontrolled outbreak, some Angelenos have faced higher risk than others. County data shows that Pacoima, a predominantly Latino neighborhood that has one of the highest case rates in the nation, has roughly five times the rate of Covid-19 cases as much richer and whiter Santa Monica.”
