The Map Room

Earlier this month, GIS and Science reported that a map of green turtle nesting sites by Andrew DiMatteo, cartographer for the State of the World’s Sea Turtles (SWOT) Project, won this year’s International Conservation Mapping Competition. The map was published in Volume VI of the SWOT Report and is available separately here (PDF). The SWOT project has published a number of maps showing sea turtle nesting sites and biogeography; there’s also an interactive map. If you know me at all, you know how big a fan I am of reptiles in general, so I’m happy to see so much mapping activity dedicated to their conservation.

Drawing on data from this study, David McCandless maps the decline in North Atlantic fish stocks over the past century. “Today’s fishing quotas and policies for example are attempting to reset fish stocks to the levels of ten or twenty years ago. But as you can see from the visualization, we were already plenty screwed back then.” Via Kottke.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has this map of aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere, based on MODIS data from August 2010. “Dust storms, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, and salt spray from the winds over the ocean are the most common and abundant producers of aerosols. Humans generate them, too, through the burning of fossil fuels, manufacturing processes, and fires for cooking, heating, and agricultural clearing. … Yellow areas are predominantly coarse particles, like dust and sea salt, while red areas are mainly fine aerosols from smoke or pollution. Gray indicates areas with no data. The brighter or more intense the color, the higher the concentration of aerosols.”

Previously: Mapping Global Fine-Particulate Matter Levels.

A series of maps on NASA’s Earth Observatory site, covering every decade since the 1880s, shows how much the world’s temperatures have deviated from the reference period of 1951-1980. Above is the map for 2000 to 2009.

To illustrate the impact of a four-degree rise in global temperatures and a four-metre rise in sea levels, Practical Action has released a London tube map showing which stations would be underwater. Via io9 and Londonist; thanks also to George for the tip.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a form of air pollution that has been linked to a number of diseases like asthma, bronchitis and cardiovascular disease, and is suspected as the cause of millions of premature deaths worldwide. Researchers at…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The October issue of National Geographic includes a map supplement that shows the Gulf of Mexico’s oil infrastructure; it doesn’t so much map the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as its context. A zoomable version is available online. The verso…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NASA has released movies showing the carbon monoxide levels present in the air as a result of the recent wildfires in Russia. “They show three-day running averages of daily measurements of carbon monoxide present at an altitude of 5.5…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A couple of interesting global maps were posted to NASA’s Earth Observatory site earlier this month: land surface temperatures for early July 2010 and, above, aquatic dead zones — “areas where the deep water is so low in dissolved…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Scientists have released a global map of forest canopy heights based on NASA data. “Although there are other local- and regional-scale forest canopy maps, the new map is the first that spans the entire globe based on one uniform…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Above, a MODIS image from NASA’s Terra satellite, taken last Saturday, showing the spread of the Deepwater Horizon slick in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA has released an interactive map that “integrates the latest data the federal responders have…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartophilia and The Map Scroll look at the Aral Sea, once the fourth-largest lake in the world, now all but dried up due to irrigation diversion. The above time-lapse video captures the Aral Sea’s disappearance. NASA’s Earth Observatory has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Last of the Wild “depicts human influence on terrestrial ecosystems using data sets compiled on or around 2000.” Sample maps showing the human footprint on the world and continental level are available; the data can be downloaded as…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The David Rumsey Map Collection announces the online availability of The California Water Atlas, “a monument of 20th century cartographic publishing.” When the atlas came out in 1979, it got rave reviews from both historians and scientists. Charles Wollenberg,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Treehugger’s 22 Most Amazing Maps Changing How We See the World is a collection of environmental maps they saw and liked over the past year. “The year 2009 brought us some incredible maps, illustrating things like how the earth’s carbon…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Environmental Atlas of Europe was announced at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen today (via EuroSpaceAgency). The Atlas provides multimedia stories about climate change based on a Bing Maps interface (Silverlight required); as an artifact of cartography, there’s…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Still on climate change, this Aftonbladet article (in Swedish) looks at how the changing climate has forced maps to change — mostly in terms of shifting coastlines and new (and disappearing) islands. Also via the Collins Map Blog (they were…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Also at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a 20-metre globe onto which climate-related information is being projected. Here’s a photo. Via Collins Maps Blog….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cool Globes: Hot Ideas for a Cooler Planet is a travelling public art exhibit about global warming that for some reason is in Copenhagen right now. The exhibit “will feature over 25 super-sized Cool Globes, each conveying a different…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A short animation from the Met Office Hadley Centre that shows “the changes in temperature across the globe, relative to pre-industrial levels, under two different emissions scenarios. The first is with emissions continuing to increase through the century. The…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Guardian reports on the British government’s release of an interactive map that shows the impact of a four-degree rise in average global temperatures. “It shows that the rise will not evenly be spread across the globe, with temperature…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps compiled from data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) reveal the extent of ice sheet thinning in Antarctica and Greenland. ICESat’s precise laser altimetry instrument, launched in 2003, has provided a high-density web of elevation…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A project is under way to map the land loss in Louisiana’s wetlands, the Daily Comet reports. The wetlands were last mapped in 1988 under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Center’s National Wetland Inventory; with several significant hurricanes since then,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The USGS has released a map of the lower 48 United States showing its “standardized” terrestrial ecosystems. An interactive version is online here. The methodology behind the map is discussed in this article. From the press release: Featuring higher…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Earlier this month, previously classified images showing the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice were released by the U.S. government. The one-metre-resolution images were taken by spy satellites on behalf of scientists studying climate change who were looking for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cambridge Mobile Urban Sensing equips volunteer pedestrians and cyclists with pollution sensors linked via Bluetooth to mobile phones; the result is a real-time map of Cambridge’s air quality — or at least the air quality along the routes the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A map produced by Global Warming Art was featured on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day earlier this week. Global Warming Art has a number of maps and other graphics illustrating the effects of climate change, most of which…  •  Continue reading this entry.

University of Tennessee researchers are collaborating with the National Park Service to map the streams of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area and the Obed Wild and Scenic River, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Their goal is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An interesting article in Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle profiling historical ecologist Robin Grossinger, who uses old maps, photos and aerial photos to reconstruct what the landscape was like in the past. More at the Historical Ecology section of the San…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Two researchers are criticizing a map found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report because it “failed to follow several cartographic principles and effectively display information, despite its important content.” In their view, the map misleads because…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The San Francisco Solar Map is a part of the city’s goal to have 10,000 roofs equipped with solar panels by 2012; it maps current solar installations and provides information for those interested in installing solar panels. Via Vector One;…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Ocean and Great Lakes Atlas, an online atlas of the state’s water resources, was announced yesterday. From the press release: “Currently, more than 200 data sets that contain information on such resources as storm drains, wetland boundaries,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

As reported last year, the provincial government of British Columbia is making its geographic databases available online and via Google Earth. The announcement was made last Friday; the Vancouver Sun has coverage. Via, and more at, AnyGeo….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Speaking of collaborative mapping projects, here are a couple of links: Richard Eriksson reports on a meeting of the Vancouver Public Space Network’s Mapping and Wayfinding group. “They are a group of mapping enthusiasts who want to organize collaboratively mapping…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Vulcan Project, which quantifies North American carbon dioxide emissions, has released maps that shows U.S. CO2 emissions at 100-kilometre resolution — far more detailed than previous efforts. The maps are also updated more frequently. Their most notable finding…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A map of the human impact on global marine ecosystems has been published in today’s issue of Science; it reveals that only four percent of the world’s oceans have not been affected by human activity. Matt Perry was part…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Times has an article on the new — 12th — edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, which was released yesterday. The article discusses the changes that had to be made since the previous edition, especially those…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Canadian International Polar Year Internet Map Server maps the research stations, projects and other information associated with the the International Polar Year. The map interface takes a bit of time to load; the data are available as separate…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s a pity that the Atlas of Tuna and Billfish Catches, from the UN’s Fish and Agriculture Organization, has such a terrible user interface — it’s a textbook case of mystery meat navigation — but, if you can stomach navigating…  •  Continue reading this entry.

There has been an explosion in mining claims lately; the Environmental Working Group’s U.S. Mining Database uses the Google Maps API to show active mines and claims on federal lands in the western United States. (There’s also a Google Earth…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England has released tranquility maps of England that depict the loss of natural landscapes to urban sprawl. BBC News coverage. Of course, tranquility is a value judgment, not a synonym for rural life. Ed…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Conservation GeoPortal is an index of conservation maps and GIS datasets. No maps or data is available on the site itself, just searchable metadata; it points to stuff elsewhere online. More here. Via Maps-L….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The UN Environment Programme’s atlas, One Planet, Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, was announced in June 2005 and has been available as a free download since at least last February. (You can always buy the book, of course.)…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Breathing Earth is a Flash-based simulation that “displays the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates — all in real time.” Hover over each country for specific data. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The start of a new joint NASA-Forest Service program to provide real-time maps of forest fires has been delayed until next week, CNet reports, which gives us a look at the program, which supplements satellite-based data with sensor data collected…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Add the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) to your list of fire mapping sites: the default view shows the forest fire risk, but there are other layers that show previously burned areas. Via La Cartoteca and Vector One….  •  Continue reading this entry.

BLDGBLOG’s been having fun with images from NASA’s Earth Observatory again (see previous entry), linking to this collection of MODIS images of Africa during 2005, showing the occurrence of fires deliberately set by people as part of their agricultural…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change is a collection of Landsat images of certain locations from different years (usually from 1972 to 2000) that show the changes to agriculture, urbanization and other activities in Landsat’s false-colour imagery, from the Ogallala…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Great Lakes Ice Atlas is a production of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory; it tracks the winter ice cover of the Great Lakes from 1973 to 2002, usually every few days to a week. Datasets are also available,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The May 2006 issue of National Geographic had an article on Alaska’s North Slope that featured a four-page map detailing land use, wildlife and offshore oil leases; that map is now available online in an interactive version. Via Slashgeo….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Travel Matters has put together maps of Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco that show overall and per-capita CO2 emissions. The point is that overall emissions are higher in cities, but lower per capita, because of more efficient transportation options…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Grist interviews Wendy Brawer, who heads, and was in 1995 one of the founders of, the Green Map system. One of the most recent green maps, highlighted by this interview, is the Powerful Green Map of New York City, which…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(I’m going to try calling these link roundups “Triangulations” and see how that goes.) Via GPS Tracklog, the difference between Garmin’s and Magellan’s topo maps. The National Geographic Society is planning a “mega-map” of the Sonoran Desert region. “It will…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The UN atlas One Planet, Many People has been making the rounds of the mapping blogosphere lately — see, for example, Very Spatial and Le Petit Blog Cartographique — probably due to it being featured on the Landsat project news…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A few links to maps on environmental (and related) subjects. A project by Dutch scientists to measure European air pollution using NASA’s Aura satellite. Some pages in Dutch. Via Treehugger. The Center for Sustainability and the Global Enviroment has a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cute little Canadian province Prince Edward Island has released an online wind atlas, the CBC reports. The atlas, in PDF and ALOV-based interactive versions, maps potential wind energy — i.e., potential locations for wind turbines. See previous entry: Wind Energy…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The World Atlas of Great Apes and Their Conservation, which I believe was launched yesterday, “provides a comprehensive overview of what is currently known about all six species of great apes — chimpanzee, bonobo, Sumatran orangutan, Bornean orangutan, eastern gorilla,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A protected forest in Tasmania was accidentally logged due to a mapping error, ABC News (Australia) reports. Via Cartography; see also GeoCarta. Update, 10:40 PM: From ABC News, “Forestry Tasmania general manager Kim Creek says the error was caused by…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Sprol is a relatively new blog that uses satellite imagery to draw attention to the effects of environmental predation. Via MetaFilter….  •  Continue reading this entry.

World Processor showcases the globes of Ingo Günther, which depict social, environmental and political data: everything from life expectancy to pollution to wealth distribution. Via WorldChanging….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A new atlas announced Saturday by the UN, titled One Planet, Many People, shows the impact of the last 30 years of human development in a dramatic way, by showing before and after satellite photography of various locations. Sample images…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Further to my previous post on wind atlases, two Stanford University researchers have compiled a global wind map that charts wind energy potential worldwide. Both Wired News and WorldChanging have details and copies of the map….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A wind energy atlas maps wind energy potential: it shows the average velocity and power of a given area, which is useful for people or companies interested in setting up wind generators. Here are the Canadian Wind Energy Atlas and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Green maps come to Sauchie, The Herald reports; it’s the first green map in Scotland. So what is lurking below the surface in Sauchie? Enid Trevett, 46, a local youth worker, points out a few features likely to be included…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Green Map system has been around for 10 years. Essentially, it’s a framework for locally produced environmental maps, the focus of which is a set of icons that denote points of ecological interest. The site does not host maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.