So you would like to use a satellite image in your article and you would like to explain it to your viewers? Here is a short guide covering some of the most frequently asked questions and giving some general explanations on satellite images. It by no means covers all aspects, as there are far too many types of satellite images, but should give you a good start to find out more on your own and maybe motivate you to create your own images, which has become quite easy and quick even with no prior knowledge of it.
Complete with examples of imagery, examples of how to use it properly, and links to resources.
Temascaltepec, ca. 1579-1580. Archivo General de Indias. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Gobierno de España.
Texcaltitlán, ca. 1579-1580. Archivo General de Indias. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Gobierno de España.
Tuzantla, ca. 1579-1580. Archivo General de Indias. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Gobierno de España.
Seven maps from late 16th-century Mexico are the focus of a 2018 study by University of Seville researcher Manuel Morato-Moreno (Cartographica article, press release). Part of a series of maps sent back to Spain by local administrators, the maps are hand-drawn, but imitate the style of printed maps: the hatching deliberately evokes woodcuts, while the animals are reminiscent of cartouches, sea monsters and other illustrative elements. But the maps also incorporate Indigenous design elements.
Although all the maps were done in the European style, they also show some characteristics that suggest the influence of indigenous cartography, like footprints on the routes and eddies in the rivers, in which fish can also be seen on the surface of the water. Having these indigenous conventions in coexistence with European cartographic characteristics suggests an effort to adapt the two cartographic styles to each other. “The authors of these maps might have unconsciously mixed European and native conventions,” the researcher adds.
In addition, the experts have identified the influence of another renaissance practice which originated in the portolan charts: drawings of figurative scenes of indigenous people and animals of the region, like deer, rabbits, vultures and armadillos. “Possibly the disproportionate representation of these animals is a way of emphasising the animal species that were characteristic of the region, or, as in the case of the armadillo, highlighting those exotic species that were unknown in Spain.”
CBC News presents seven maps, drawn from the City of Ottawa Archives and other sources, that purport to tell the story of Ottawa, from its beginnings in the 1860s to today. Highlights include its since-abandoned streetcar network, the Gréber plan, and Indigenous claims in the region. [WMS]
Colby Bartlett “took a chance” on a water-stained 1841 map of Lafayette, Indiana he found at a pawn shop, where the asking price was $80. But his research into the map’s origins took a completely unexpected turn. The Lafayette Journal and Courier has the story about how Bartlett inadvertently discovered the Tippecanoe County Public Library’s missing copy of the map before the library realized it had gone missing. Believe me, you want to read this. [Tony Campbell]
A project of Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre, the London Medieval Murder Map is an interactive map that plots 142 murders from the first half of the 14th century onto one of two maps of London: a 1572 map from Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum or a map of London circa 1270 published by the Historic Towns Trust in 1989. The interactive map is powered by Google Maps, but the Braun and Hogenberg is not georectified, so the pushpins shift as you toggle between the base maps. [Ars Technica]
A massive wooden model of the city of San Francisco that has not been on display, at least in one piece, since 1942 has been re-assembled as a virtual model by the David Rumsey Map Collection. Built by the WPA, the model was assembled from 158 individual pieces to form a massive, 42×38-foot (12.8×11.6m) model at a scale of 1:1,200, and represented a snapshot of the city as it was in 1940. It’s available as a single composite image, as well as images of individual pieces; a Google Earth layer enables the model to be viewed at an oblique angle and superimposed on modern satellite imagery. Sections of the model itself will be on display at various branches of the San Francisco Public Library as part of Bik Van der Pol’s Take Part project; the exhibits will take place between 25 January and 25 March 2019. [Boing Boing]
Everything under the sun can be expressed as a Tube map. Including, as blogger Camestros Felapton demonstrates above, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books. A glance at the original and official maps of Earthsea reveals that world as an intricate, almost overwhelming archipelago: Camestros’s map, like all good transit diagrams, expresses the books as journeys between points.
The World Magnetic Model—the standard model of the Earth’s magnetic field and a crucial part of modern navigation systems—was last updated in 2015. That update was supposed to last until 2020, but problems with the model started within a year of the last update. As Nature reports, a geomagnetic pulse under South America in 2016 made the magnetic field “lurch”:
By early 2018, the World Magnetic Model was in trouble. Researchers from NOAA and the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh had been doing their annual check of how well the model was capturing all the variations in Earth’s magnetic field. They realized that it was so inaccurate that it was about to exceed the acceptable limit for navigational errors.
As a result, the WMM is being updated a year early—this month, in fact, though the U.S. government shutdown is pushing back the release of the updated model.
You know who isn’t worried about the future of paper maps and whether people still know how to use them? The people who actually sell them. The Guardian’s Kevin Rushby talks to Stanfords cartographer Martin Greenaway, ostensibly on the occasion of the venerable map store’s move to new digs in London; Greenaway thinks that paper maps are ripe for a comeback (Stanfords does a lot of print-on-demand maps), and points out a number of other map use cases that a mobile device simply can’t be used for. [CAG]
With Barely Maps, Peter Gorman has reduced maps to their most minimalist, and their most cryptic: a grid of abstract shapes that represent the geometries of states, neighbourhoods, subway stops or intersections. Gorman started desigining them a few years ago as a side-gig, he writes. “Then, last year, my print ‘Intersections of Seattle’ went viral, and I decided to make the map-based art prints a full-time thing. Now, as I get close to 100 original maps, my next project is to compile a book of my designs, along with the stories that inspired them.” The maps are available for sale on Etsy; the book, he hopes, will be available by the end of 2019. [Kottke]
CNet’s Kent German asks people to stop tech-shaming over old phones and paper maps, though I’m not exactly sure who exactly does this (it’s not like he provides any examples). Anyway, one example he does use to bolster his argument is the time a paper map saved him from getting lost in France when his rental car’s GPS didn’t have updated maps; the graft to the larger argument in favour of not being so quick to abandon old tech in favour of the latest and greatest does leave some visible seams. (He also drags the post office into the argument. It’s Luddite potpourri.) [MAPS-L]
The argument for paper maps is getting ever more insistent, even shrill, but it seems to me to be mainly coming from the tech side of things. My impression is that the people who rely too much on mobile maps haven’t lost the ability to read maps; they never had it in the first place.
Over at GeoLounge, Caitlin has a brief and basic overview of medieval maps and travel guides, including T-O maps, travel guides for pilgrims, mappae mundi, and portolan charts. As she points out, only the last of these even attempted to be geographically accurate; the others had other purposes.
