Here’s a gallery of student maps from the Fall 2015 semester of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Introduction to Cartography course, courtesy of student magazine Edge Effects. Some nice and interesting work. [Andy Woodruff]
Month: May 2016
The First Global Topographic Map of Mercury
The first complete topographic map of Mercury, based on data from the MESSENGER mission, was released last Friday: MESSENGER, USGS. The version above is a Robinson projection without labels (Robinson with labels, global DEM). “Mercury’s surface is colored according the topography of the surface, with regions with higher elevations colored brown, yellow and red, and regions with lower elevations appearing blue and purple.” [GIS and Science, The National Map]
And Now Some Map News from New England
The Wiscasset Newspaper (seriously, that’s what it’s called) of Wiscasset, Maine profiles former resident Gary Flanders, who’s “made it a hobby collecting old colonial maps of the Wiscasset area.” [WMS]
The New Hampshire Union Leader marks the 200th anniversary of Philip Carrigain’s map of New Hampshire; only 250 copies were distributed, some of which are still in the possession of the communities who submitted their surveys to Carrigain. (The above copy comes from the David Rumsey collection.) [WMS]
Canada’s Arctic Waters Are ‘Dangerously Unmapped’
Climate change has made the Arctic increasingly open to shipping, and more ships travel the Canadian Arctic every year. But as Claire Eamer argues in Hakai magazine, the lack of mapping makes such voyages a dangerous proposition. “[J]ust because the ice is melting it doesn’t mean the waterways are safe. The federal Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) is responsible for mapping Canada’s waters. So far, they’ve only managed to map roughly 10 percent of Arctic waterways in accordance with international standards.” [CCA]
Fort McMurray Fire Roundup
Here are some links to maps and satellite imagery of the wildfire that forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray, Alberta this week.
1. The fire is fuelled in part by abnormally high temperatures: 32°C (90°F) was reported earlier this week. The above temperature anomaly map, based on MODIS data from NASA’s Terra satellite, demonstrates how unusual these temperatures are: “The map above shows land surface temperature from April 26 to May 3, 2016, compared to the 2000–2010 average for the same one-week period. Red areas were hotter than the long-term average; blue areas were below average.”
2. NASA’s Earth Observatory is also assembling a collection of Landsat satellite images of the fire:
(Sources: 3 May, 4 May, 5 May)
3. Smoke from the fire is making it into the United States, and turning up on NOAA imagery:
Enahnced weatherView image shows winds carrying smoke from the Ft. McMurray Fire into the US https://t.co/HXtf1VFIgM pic.twitter.com/xDyTVFZJhp
— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) May 6, 2016
Look at the smoke from the Fort McMurray fire, it's traveled all the way to the gulf coast! pic.twitter.com/uEQigSCjqN
— Jim Cantore (@JimCantore) May 6, 2016
4. Maclean’s and CBC News have tried to depict the size of the fire by superimposing it on other cities in Canada and elsewhere in the world; so has Kyrstyn Morochuk, whose maps have been reposted by the Huffington Post. I’m not sure who came up with it first.
Previously: Canadian Wildfire Maps.
A few more books have been added to the Map Books of 2016 page (for which I have relied upon reader submissions, as well as shameless cribbing from Bert Johnson’s indefatigable posts to the Washington Map Society Facebook group; he often tracks upcoming book releases).
India Proposes Fines, Jail Terms for ‘Incorrect’ Maps
The government of India has long been obsessed with maps that failed to show its official and “correct” borders—i.e., maps that showed the Pakistan-controlled parts of Jammu and Kashmir as part of Pakistan, or Chinese-controlled Aksai Chin and Chinese-claimed Arunachal Pradesh as part of China. Maps for an international audience that showed the de facto situation on the ground rather than the Indian claim have been censored at the border. Now things have escalated: a draft bill proposes drastic penalties: up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to Rs 100 crore (about $15 million U.S.; 1 crore = 10 million) for publishing a map or geospatial data with the “wrong” boundaries. News coverage: Hindustani Times, Quartz India, Washington Post. [Stefan Geens/WMS]
Previously: India Censors The Economist’s Kashmir Map; India’s Mapping Panic Continues; The Survey of India Isn’t Helping; India Stamps Publications’ “Incorrect” Maps at the Border; Maps Must Be Cleared by the Survey of India; Google Earth, India and Security—Again; Google Earth: Indian Reactions.
Chidō Museum Exhibit Features Huge Map of Northeastern Japan
An exhibition at the Chidō Museum in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture features a huge (11 m × 5 m) mid-17th-century map of northeastern Japan, the Asahi Shimbun reports: “It is a copy of the Dewa Ikkoku no Ezu picture map, which was jointly compiled by feudal domains controlling the region stretching from today’s Yamagata Prefecture to neighboring Akita Prefecture.” [WMS]
Canadian Wildfire Maps
Yesterday wildfires swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta, the population centre of the oil sands industry, forcing the evacuation of nearly all of its more than 60,000 residents. It therefore seems timely to point to the maps produced by the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System. There are static maps of current conditions, fire danger maps providing an index of fire risk and potential damage (see above for today’s), and various forecasts, as well as an interactive version.
Bodleian Library Acquires Annotated Tolkien Map
A map of Middle-earth annotated by J. R. R. Tolkien himself that was discovered among the papers of illustrator Pauline Baynes last year and subsequently put up for auction has been purchased by Oxford’s Bodleian Library for its Tolkien archive. News coverage: BBC News, Guardian.
Previously: Map of Middle-earth, Annotated by Tolkien Himself, Discovered.
Worldly Consumers and the Historical Accessibility of Maps
I have a longstanding interest in the extent to which people throughout history could access cultural production: books, music and so forth. Essentially, the economics of cultural life. So when I was poking around the University of Chicago Press website last month (previously), I was very interested to stumble across a book that came out last year: Genevieve Carlton’s Worldly Consumers: The Demand for Maps in Renaissance Italy (Amazon, iBooks), which examines the ways in which private individuals had access to maps. As you can imagine, very relevant to my interests.
It’s certainly not the only book relevant to those interests. There’s Susan Schulten’s and Martin Brückner’s work, of course; and I should also take a look at Christine Marie Petto’s When France Was King of Cartography: The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France (Amazon, iBooks). Expensive monographs all; methinks I need a university library card.
Previously: The Social Life of Maps.
Burial Records Move from Window-Blind Maps to Digital Database
Nick Malawskey of Pennlive.com has the story of how the Newport Cemetery digitized its burial records, which had previously been recorded as hand-drawn maps on the back of window blinds.
It was, to say the least, an imperfect system. Caretakers essentially acted as the cemetery’s librarians, but without a Dewey Decimal system to guide them. Numbers were not necessarily sequential, or the system shifted over the years, making the maps essential to finding the older graves. And as time rolled on, the maps began to deteriorate, fraying at the edges or cracking apart.
[WMS]
Pluto Map Updated with Earlier, Lower-Resolution Imagery
An updated map of Pluto now includes lower-resolution imagery from earlier in New Horizons’ approach. “The map includes all resolved images of Pluto’s surface acquired between July 7-14, 2015, at pixel resolutions ranging from 18 miles (30 kilometers) on the Charon-facing hemisphere (left and right edges of the map) to 770 feet (235 meters) on the hemisphere facing New Horizons during the spacecraft’s closest approach on July 14, 2015 (map center). The non-encounter hemisphere was seen from much greater range and is, therefore, in far less detail.” See coverage from Universe Today and Wired (the latter has a nice loupe feature on the map).
NASA also released an elevation map of the area around Sputnik Planum (the left side of the heart-shaped feature).
Previously: New Maps of Ceres and Pluto.
And Now Some Map News from Texas
Running from 29 April to 5 September 2016 at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, Texas, Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State “is a once-in-a-generation, collaborative exhibition covering nearly three hundred years of Texas mapping. The maps, dating from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, document the birth of Texas, the evolution of the physical and political boundaries of the state and the rise of the Alamo and San Antonio Missions.” [WMS]
Meanwhile, the Texas General Land Office has acquired five rare maps from the 1840-1841 survey of the boundary between the then-Republic of Texas and the United States (see example above). Press release. [Tony Campbell/WMS]
‘What Happened to Google Maps?’
In an essay called “What Happened to Google Maps?” Justin O’Beirne notes that between 2010 and 2016 Google Maps has changed from emphasizing cities at the expense of roads to emphasizing the road network at the expense of cities—a turn he chalks up to the shift to mobile device usage—and turns to a 1960s-era paper map to demonstrate what he thinks a balanced Google Maps should look like. An interesting look at the design choices in online maps. [Cartophilia]