More maps

 Below are a couple of my maps from earlier on in the semester. The first one was a typography and labeling exercise, and the second is just a black and white boundaries map of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C.

On the MD, VA, DC map I was playing with using negative space.

Meandering River Map: Color Usage in Cartography

Rivers are incredibly dynamic and powerful feature that greatly influence their surrounding landscapes. From the Colorado Canyon carving deeper down into the Grand Canyon, to the ever meandering Mississippi River, it is easy to forget how these features influence the landscape over hundreds of years.

The above map is of the ancient paths of the Mississippi River, and through the colors and forms drawn, the cartographer tells an incredibly dynamic tale of how this famed river has meandered over time.

At first the red classifications boldly capture the viewers eye, introducing us to the dynamism of the Mississippi River. But notice, red is the only bold color choice and is broken up by the more subdued yellows, oranges, and blues. After the red curves so fearlessly dare us to gaze upon this image, those oranges, yellows, and blues begin to tell a deeper story of the Mississippi River's wandering path. Finally, after allowing the eyes to inspect each curiously colorful elongated curve, the center of the map reveals where this adventurous river had settled at the time the cartographer crafted this map.

Typographic Map (courtesy of Buzzfeed)

Below is a link to an article entirely comprised of type: 
http://www.buzzfeed.com/somenorcalguy/typographic-map-of-the-world-e6x

Let's Talk About Projections

The following link is a youtube clip from a 90's show called the West Wing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY 

In the 4:00 minute clip in which the Organizations of Cartographers for Social Equality lobbies to have the show's president (President Barlett) encourage legislation to support elementary and secondary geography education using the Gall-Peters projections.

Wait a second, there is more than one map of the world?? Heck yes there is, because depending upon the location/country/city being mapped and the scale used, the projection changes. For example, the lambert conformal conic projection rocks for depicting the United States:

http://myweb.unomaha.edu/~kstuart/CartGIS/MapProjection/USALambertsConformalConic.png

http://www.geoatlas.com/en/maps/world-maps-0/mercator-projection-24

The above map uses a Mercator projection, and I'm willing to bet this is the projection the average American is most familiar with. Wait a second... is Russia really that big? Why does Greenland look bigger than South America? What the heck is going on? Without out getting into serious geography nerd jargon, the simple answer is that the further from the equator a landmass happens to be, the more distorted it's size and area will be.

Below is an image of the Gall-Peters projection: 

http://theirondandelion.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/gall-peters-projection-world-map.jpg

If you're used to the Mercator or even Robinson projection, the Gall-Peters projection probably comes off as a little trippy. "Like whoa, Afrca is HUGE, and Europe looks so small!". Now bear in mind, no world scale map is going to be 100% accurate. Ever. Where the Mercator projection was created predominately for the purpose of maritime navigation, the Gall-Peters is a cylindrical equal area projection. Wait a second, let me translate that into English: this kind of map is designed to depict each landmass based upon it's actual area. Hence why Greenland looks smaller than South America.

Map projections is one of those geography topics that could be discussed forever and eternity. However, it's a Saturday night, so let me leave you all with something more entertaining: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esbS_vT25GU

US Choropleth Map

The above map is an choropleth from earlier on in the semester. I went with the light blue to dark purple color ramp to represent the sequence of owner occupied housing data. Perhaps with the end of the semester around the corner I will be able to create a bivariate map of the number of owner occupied houses versus the number of rented houses per state (as both data sets were available to me at the time).

Dot Density Example

The above map is the U.S. Census Bureau's 1980 population dot density map, or what also appears to be their "night time map" due to the fact it looks like the night time illumination one would expect to see with highly developed/urban areas. This map strikes a nice balance in that there is clearly a clustering, almost whiting out, of highly dense areas, but due to the smaller dot size there is not a vast white out effect being produced.

Isoline Map example

Isolines rock at depicting continuous data. From temperature maps on your local news station, to topographic maps, isolines are your friend in showing continuous data over a spatial plane. The above map forgoes the isoline boundaries, and instead the cartographer made the choice to simply allow the colors to flow from the low values to high values. It is important to note that the above map does not have set intervals for labeling it's isoline values, and since this is a temperature map for non-research purposes this is not terribly surprising -- most temperature maps produced at this scale are labeling temperature at the rough location of major cities (New York City, Washington D.C., Denver, CO, etc).