How xkcd Does Maps

Randall Munroe, author of the xkcd web comic, posts a surprising amount of map-related content, which I invariably end up linking to here. With some exceptions, they fall into one of two categories, each of which has a recent example.

The first category is a hand-drawn infographic map showing, in earnest, some interesting or surprising information. See, for example, this map showing the most observed animal or plant in each U.S. state:

Randall Munroe, “iNaturalist Animals and Plants,” xkcd, 21 Jul 2025.

Other maps of this ilk include drainage basins, lesser-known towns sharing a famous place name, least informative Google Trends maps, and maps of the 2016, 2018 (challengers) and 2020 elections.

The second category is where Randall chooses the path of violence, with maps clearly designed by Black Hat Guy to hurt our brains. These include a series of maps that mangle U.S. state borders (1, 2, 3). But the most insidious are his Bad Maps Projections series, the most recent of which projects continents onto their own globes:

Randall Munroe, “Bad Map Projection: Interrupted Spheres,” xkcd, 30 Jul 2025.

Thing is, this one isn’t as brain-curdling, because similar globes—globes that depict a portion of the world on an entire sphere—exist in the real world.

A Map of Polar Bears in Iceland, Where They Don’t Belong

Left: a map of Iceland showing where polar bears have been reported in recorded history. Right: A bar graph showing the number of polar bears reported in Iceland, in 50-year increments.
Náttúrufræðistofnun Íslands

The Icelandic Institute of Natural History has mapped every known appearance of polar bears in Iceland: “Polar bears are not native to Iceland, although they do occasionally turn up in Iceland and are thus classified as vagrants. Information exists on just over 600 polar bears recorded as having arrived in Iceland from the beginning of human settlement on the island to the present day. This is a somewhat imprecise figure, since polar bears have undoubtedly come ashore without their presence going noticed, while bear sightings and encounters were not always documented in the past. The last polar bear observation was at Höfðaströnd in Jökulfirðir in September 2024.”

Reimagining Rural Cartographies

Reimagining Rural Cartographies is a series from independent rural news outlet Barn Raiser that “features written and photo essays that create or examine nontraditional and living maps of the Midwest. How does the path a cougar took to roam into the heart of Chicago help us understand how urban, suburban and rural landscapes are changing? What really happens in the forest at the center of a recent Landback movement? How does the USPS serve as a rural lifeline, connecting neighbors and faraway places, despite service cuts?” Three articles so far.

Atlas of Ungulate Migration

Screenshot of the Atlas of Ungulate Migration, showing the migration paths of mule deer in Wyoming.
Screenshot

The U.N. has launched an online Atlas of Ungulate Migration. “Driven by tracking data on ungulate migrations, the Atlas of Ungulate Migration serves as a repository for up-to-date migration maps that can inform conservation planning, infrastructure development and policy making. The maps detail high, medium and low-use migration corridors for a diversity of species, ranging from the iconic Serengeti wildebeest and African elephant, to the saiga of the Central Asian steppe. Most importantly, the maps illustrate where critical migration routes intersect with linear barriers like roads or railways. This atlas represents the best available science for extant migrations, with downloadable maps each accompanied by a factsheet describing the migration in detail, the data analysis, and its specific threats. The atlas is living, and continually updated.” News release.

The Washington Post Maps Wildlife Corridors in Wyoming

Washington Post
Washington Post

Last month the Washington Post published a feature on the impact of Interstate 80 on wildlife migrations in Wyoming, and how climate change would affect animals’ ability to move to new habitat as their usual stomping grounds are made unsuitable by global warming. The print version (above) and online version have related maps—one static, one dynamic—that illustrate wildlife paths and how they are stymied by the highway, as well as places where overpasses and tunnels might help. [Lauren Tierney]

Humboldt’s Maps

David Rumsey Map Collection

Writing for Smithsonian.com, Greg Millar looks at the maps of pioneering naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

What’s often omitted, however, in discussions of Humboldt’s scientific legacy is the role that his pioneering maps and scientific illustrations played in shaping his thinking. By creating visualizations of data that had previously been bound up in tables, Humboldt revealed connections that had eluded others, says historian Susan Schulten of the University of Denver. “He’s really a visual thinker,” she says.

According to Schulten, Humboldt was one of the first scientists to use maps to generate and test scientific hypotheses. One example was his use of what he called “isotherm” lines to indicate regions of the globe with the same average temperature. These lines are ubiquitous on weather maps today, and they seem so obvious we take them for granted. But when Humboldt published a map using them in 1817, it caused scientists to rethink the widely held assumption that the average temperature of a region depends primarily on its latitude. The isotherm lines on Humboldt’s map had ups and downs that deviated from lines of latitude. This prompted him and others to look for explanations, and eventually led to an understanding of how ocean currents, mountain ranges, and other features of geography contribute to local climates.

For more on Humboldt generally, Andrea Wulf’s biography, The Invention of Nature, is a marvellous read.

A Map of Canada’s Declining Caribou Populations

Chris Brackley, Canadian Geographic

Canadian Geographic maps the decline of Canada’s caribou populations. “All of Canada’s caribou subspecies have increasingly been in the news as the animal’s national population, which once numbered in the millions, has declined drastically and quickly to little more than a million today. Experts are concerned some populations may not survive the threats they’re facing. One herd, British Columbia’s South Selkirk, had just three females left in April 2018.” [r/MapPorn]

An Osprey Named Julie

It began with an osprey named Julie, who in 2015 migrated from the Detroit River in Michigan all the way to Maracaibo, Venezuela, stopping at wetlands and wildlife refuges along the way. Julie wore a GPS tracker. John Nelson took Julie’s data and created a series of maps of her journey that represent a brilliant use of negative space: aerial and satellite imagery is shown only along the paths she took; everything else is blanked out. It’s a linear map of a bird’s entire world. The Story Map goes into more detail; the accompanying text is frankly beautifully written. John explains how he made the maps here.

A Book Roundup

The Routledge Handbook

Out last month, the expensive, 600-page Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography (Routledge). Edited by Alexander J. Kent (who co-wrote The Red Atlas) and Peter Vujakovic, the book “draws on the wealth of new scholarship and practice in this emerging field, from the latest conceptual developments in mapping and advances in map-making technology to reflections on the role of maps in society. It brings together 43 engaging chapters on a diverse range of topics, including the history of cartography, map use and user issues, cartographic design, remote sensing, volunteered geographic information (VGI), and map art.” [The History of Cartography Project]

New Academic Books

New academic books on maps and cartography published over the past couple of months include:

More on Books We’ve Heard of Before

National Geographic interviews Malachy Tallack, the author of The Un-Discovered Islands, and The Guardian shares seven maps from James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s Where the Animals Go.

Related: Map Books of 2017.

Global Assessment of Reptile Distributions

The Global Assessment of Reptile Distributions project aims to map the distribution of every species of amphisbaenian, crocodilian, lizard, snake, tuatara and turtle, with the goal of identifying biodiversity hotspots and priorities for conservation efforts. Reptile biodiversity does not, it appears, align with other vertebrate biodiversity; this is one point raised by a recent article GARD researchers published in Nature Ecology and Evolution that includes maps of reptile distribution by type (i.e. snakes, lizards, turtles) and maps that compare reptile diversity to other tetrapods (amphibians, birds and mammals). Geographical magazine has coverage of the GARD project in their December 2017 issue.

Crowdsourced Satellite Image Analysis

There are many circumstances where the amount of data vastly exceeds the ability to process and analyze it—and computers can only do so much. Enter crowdsourcing. Steve Coast points to Digital Globe’s Tomnod project, which basically crowdsources satellite image analysis. In the case of the current project to  map the presence of Weddell seals on the Antarctic Peninsula and the ice floes of the Weddell Sea, users are given an image tile and asked to indicate whether there are seals in the image. It’s harder than it looks, but it’s the kind of routine task that most people can do—many hands, light work and all that—and it helps researchers focus their attention where it needs focusing. (A similar campaign for the Ross Sea took place in 2016.)

Another ongoing campaign asks users to identify flooded and damaged infrastructure and trash heaps in post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico.

Ecological Atlas of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas

Audubon Alaska, Ecological Atlas of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas.

Audobon Alaska’s Ecological Atlas of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas maps the environment, biota and wildlife in the three seas surrounding the Bering Strait, as well as the human activity that puts them at risk. The cartography is by Daniel Huffman and not by coincidence excellent. It’s available for download as PDF files, either chapter-by-chapter or a whopping 125-megabyte single download; a print copy costs $125 with shipping and handling. [NACIS]

CityLab on Where the Animals Go

Now that Where the Animals Go, a book that maps tracking data from field biologists’ research projects, is available in a U.S. edition (previously), it’s getting another round of media attention on this side of the pond. This CityLab piece interviews the authors and highlights several of the maps (and the studies behind them).

Previously: Where the Animals Go.

New Map Books for September 2017

Map books coming out this month:

The Art of Cartographics (Goodman) is available now in the U.K. but won’t come out in North America until March 2018. The publisher describes it as “a stunning collection of maps designed in a unique way. […] This carefully curated book selects the most creative and interesting map design projects from around the world, and offers inspiration for designers and map-lovers alike. Covering themes including power, gentrification, literature, animals, plants and food, and showcasing handrawn, painted, digital, 3D sculpted and folded maps, Cartographics offers a slice of social history that is as beautiful as it is fascinating.” Buy at Amazon U.K. | Pre-order at Amazon

In a similar vein, while the British edition of Where the Animals Go, a compendium of spectacular maps of animal paths, came out last November, U.S. readers have had to wait until now: W. W. Norton is publishing the U.S. edition, and it comes out next week. Buy at Amazon

Also out next week: the National Geographic Atlas of Beer (National Geographic). I have no information about the quantity or quality of the maps therein, but according to the publisher the book does have some: “The most visually stunning and comprehensive beer atlas available, this richly illustrated book includes more beers and more countries than any other book of its kind. Including beer recommendations from Garrett Oliver, the famed brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, and written by ‘beer geographers’ Nancy Hoalst-Pullen and Mark Patterson, this indispensable guide features more than 100 illuminating maps and over 200 beautiful color photos.” Buy at Amazon

Related: Map Books of 2017.