Maarten Lambrechts discusses how to make a dot density population map, in technical detail. He uses QGIS to process data for his home country of Belgium. The map above is one result (he also zoomed in on Brussels).
Dot Density Maps of Belgium
Category: GIS
Coming Soon: Kenneth Field’s Open Online Course on Cartography
Esri will be hosting a free, six-week massive open online course (MOOC) on cartography later this year. Called Cartography., it’s taught by Kenneth Field and coincides with the release of Field’s textbook of the same name.
Each weekly lesson in the Cartography. MOOC focuses on the creation of one exemplary map that draws together key cartographic ideas. Lessons consist of about two hours of content, including video discussions, guided and self-guided exercises using ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online, quizzes, interactions between students and instructors, and supplemental resources. Participants who engage with all the course content will receive a certificate of completion and a discount code to purchase Cartography., the book, should they wish to continue their learning.
Registration opens on 18 April and continues until 2 May. It is, as I mentioned, free; Esri expects more than 10,000 people to sign up.
Cartography., the book, is currently scheduled to come out in June.
Two More Books for 2017
The year 2017 is almost at an end, but two more map books, published last month, have just come to my attention (via, as usual, the WMS’s indefatigable Bert Johnson). These, then, are very late additions to the Map Books of 2017 page:
Sad Topographies by Damien Rudd (Simon & Schuster), who “journeys across continents in search of the world’s most joyless place names and their fascinating etymologies.” This appears to be an outgrowth of the author’s sadtopographies Instagram account.1
New Lines: Critical GIS and the Trouble of the Map by Matthew W. Wilson (University of Minnesota Press). “Seeking to bridge a foundational divide within the discipline of geography—between cultural and human geographers and practitioners of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)—Wilson suggests that GIS practitioners may operate within a critical vacuum and may not fully contend with their placement within broader networks, the politics of mapping, the rise of the digital humanities, the activist possibilities of appropriating GIS technologies, and more.”
How to Build a Fire Map
Last October Robin Kraft posted an online map of the northern California wildfires showing satellite imagery from before and after the fires (see previous entry); today he’s posted a blog entry explaining how he built it, in great technical detail. The timing is not accidental: “There is another fire raging in Los Angeles right now — if DigitalGlobe and Planet release their data, you can use this guide to make your own map.”
ArcticDEM Release Six Adds Eurasia
The sixth release of the ArcticDEM initiative adds 32 percent more terrain data, mostly in Russia and Scandinavia. ArcticDEM provides a two-metre-resolution digital elevation model for arctic regions north of the 60th parallel, plus those bits of Alaska, Greenland and the Kamchatka Peninsula south of 60. The final product is due out next year. More at Earth & Space Science News. [GIS and Science]
Tomlinson’s Ph.D. Thesis Now Available
James Cheshire reports that the Ph.D. thesis of the “father of GIS,” Roger Tomlinson, has been digitized. Tomlinson completed his thesis, “Geographical Information Systems, Spatial Data Analysis and Decision Making in Government,” at the University College London’s Department of Geography in 1974. It can be downloaded as a PDF at this link.
Eighth Edition of Map Use
This one slipped past me: the eighth edition of Map Use: Reading Analysis, Interpretation, the college textbook by A. Jon Kimerling, Aileen R. Buckley, Phillip C. Muehrcke and Juliana O. Muehrcke, came out last November from Esri Press. [GIS Lounge]
Cartographies of Disease
The revised edition of Tom Koch’s Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine—“a comprehensive survey of the technology of mapping and its relationship to the battle against disease”—is now out from Esri Press. (Or at least it’s scheduled to be: the paperback is not yet in stock at Amazon.) [GIS Lounge]
Koch is also the author of Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground (2011).
Maclean’s Profiles Nova Scotia’s COGS
Nova Scotia Community College’s Centre of Geographic Sciences, a tiny, 200-student campus in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, gets two writeups in Canada’s national newsmagazine, Maclean’s, as part of its annual campus guide: its unique marine geomatics program is profiled here, and the W. K. Morrison Special Collection, which I told you about last June, is profiled here.
Making Maps, Third Edition
On the Making Maps: DIY Cartography blog, John Krygier announces the third edition of his and Denis Wood’s Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS, out this month from Guilford Press. The new edition of this extremely visual guide includes more than 40 new pages of content, Krygier says, plus new maps and examples and other changes he details in the blog post. Buy at Amazon.
(I reviewed the first edition back in 2006. I knew a lot less about cartography back then, and I suspect it shows.)
2016 Map Gallery Results
Esri has announced the results of their 2016 Map Gallery competition. The top three maps in a number of different categories are posted on this page. Nearly 700 maps were submitted for the contest by attendees at last month’s Esri User Conference. [Esri]
Every Map Projection
Mike Bostock has generated a single image showing every map projection class available in the d3-geo and d3-geo-projection JavaScript libraries. Not every map projection in existence is included, mind. [Benjamin Hennig]
The WSJ on Null Island
Here’s another, more in-depth look at Null Island, a point at the intersection of the equator and prime meridian that shows up in the event of a geocoding error, this time from the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Lee Hotz. [WMS]
Previously: Null Island.
Sexism in the GIS Workplace
Is Sexism a Problem in GIS? Caitlin Dempsey Morais of GIS Lounge grapples with a thorny subject. “Over a two week period in September of 2015, I opened a survey on GIS Lounge to those working in the geospatial industry in order to take a look at the question of, ‘is sexism in the workplace an issue for women (and men) working in GIS?’ This article reports back on the results from that survey.”
Conference on GIS and Ancient History
Mapping the Past: GIS Approaches to Ancient History, a conference hosted by the Ancient World Mapping Center (the folks behind the Barrington Atlas), takes place at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, from 7 to 9 April 2016. It’s open to the public. Here’s the full schedule. [via]
Previously: Antiquity à la Carte.