This NOAA article looks at three kinds of imagery provided by the GOES-16 geostationary weather satellite: GeoColor, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (!), and full disk infrared imagery from the Advanced Baseline Imager. GOES-16 launched last November and is currently in the checkout phase before it replaces GOES-13 at 75° west latitude.
Michelin Acquires Streetwise
On 1 September Michelin announced that it had acquired the assets previously held by Streetwise Maps, in an all-cash deal. Streetwise announced that it was closing last year. Michelin will continue to publish maps under the Streetwise name; their publishing wing already produces a ton of travel guides, restaurant guides and maps (my Michelin map of Paris was essential during my trip there). [MAPS-L]
You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City
An exhibition taking place now at the New York City Library, Picturing the City: Illustrated Maps of NYC, features 16 pictorial maps from the Library’s collection of illustrations. Running until 9 April 2018, it’s curated by Katharine Harmon, whose book, You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City, came out last November from Princeton Architectural Press. Here’s an interview with Harmon about the exhibition in Print magazine.
This seems as good an excuse as any to take a closer look at You Are Here: NYC. Past time, actually, since I’ve had a review copy in my hands for a year now.
You Are Here: NYC is the third of Katharine Harmon’s map books. The first, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, came out in 2003, the second, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, in 2010. Harmon’s distinctive style in editing and curating these books, carries over to the present volume.
Continue reading “You Are Here: NYC: Mapping the Soul of the City”
Mapping the Czech Elections
Detailed maps of the results of last weekend’s parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, which saw the apparent rise to power of populist billionaire Andrej Babiš, are available at iRozhlas. The page is in Czech, of course, but the detail is there for those who need it. [Maps Mania]
The New York Times Maps the Tubbs Fire
The destruction wrought by the Tubbs Fire in northern California, and the speed at which it spread, is mapped with excruciating detail by the New York Times graphics team.
A Fantasy Map of Dayton, Ohio
Another example of a map of a real place done in the style of a fantasy map: Ben Riddlebarger’s map of Dayton, Ohio, done in October 2014. [Cartophilia]
Book Review Roundup
Geographical magazine reviews The Red Atlas, the survey of Soviet-era topo maps of the world by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent out this month from University of Chicago Press. National Geographic’s All Over the Map blog also has a feature on The Red Atlas. I’ve received my own review copy of The Red Atlas and hope to have a review for you … at some point (I’m rather backlogged).
Meanwhile, Geographical also has a review of Alastair Bonnett’s latest book of geographical idiosyncracies, Beyond the Map, and All Over the Map takes a look at Andrew DeGraff’s book mapping movie plotlines, Cinemaps.
Previously: New Map Books for October 2017; Alastair Bonnett’s Beyond the Map; Soviet Spy Maps, Redux.
Robert G. Bartholomew, 1927-2017
I’ve belatedly heard the news that Robert G. Bartholomew died last April in Edinburgh at the age of 90. Robert and his older brothers John and Peter, who died in 2008 and 1987, respectively, were the last of six generations of Bartholomews working for the eponymous family mapmaking firm, John Bartholomew and Son, that was, among other things, responsible for the Times series of atlases before being subsumed into the HarperCollins publishing empire. Robert served as production manager, John as director and Peter as chairman. See the NLS’s Bartholomew Archive and the family’s website for more on the firm’s and the family’s history. [WMS]
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]
Atlas for the End of the World
The Atlas for the End of the World collects a series of world maps that measure our planet’s environmental well-being. More specifically, they examine the amount of protected area in our planet’s biological hotspots, especially relative to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2020 conservation targets. Created by landscape architects, the accompanying text (by project lead Richard J. Weller) tends toward the abstruse and verbose, but the maps themselves are quite interesting. (I note that they make extensive use of the Goode homolosine projection, which is refreshing.) [Geo Lounge]
The Avignon Chart
Though I haven’t seen it, the most recent issue of Maps and History reports on the discovery of a fragment of an early portolan chart in the departmental archives of the Vaucluse. The so-called Avignon Chart (Carte d’Avignon)1 dates to around 1300, making it one of the earlier portolan charts known to exist. If you can read French, the Brussels Map Circle’s website has a lengthy article about the chart by Jacques Mille and Paul Fermon that discusses, among other things, the chart’s provenance and how its approximate age was determined. (I don’t know whether this is the same article that appears in Maps and History.) [Tony Campbell]
Ottawa Transit Maps, 1929-2015
Carelton University’s library has an online collection of Ottawa transit maps from OC Transpo and its predecessor agencies, dating as far back as 1929 (above). The originals scanned as PDFs, with SHP and KML files if the vectorized transit routes are what you’re really after. [Transit Maps]
During The Map Room’s hiatus (June 2011 to January 2016), any map blogging I did went on my personal blog. I wrote a total of 201 map-related blog posts during that period. At the moment I’m starting to remove older material on my personal website, so those posts have now gone dark over there. I’d like to keep them around, so I’ve started the process of importing those map posts over here. I did 2011 earlier today, and I learned that each post is going to need a lot of cleaning up, so it’ll be a slow process.
The Fantasy Maps section that once resided on my personal site is now more or less over here, too—though it’s as bare-bones and incomplete here as it was over there.
California Wildfires: Mapping Sonoma County
Sonoma County’s wildfire information page points to a number of useful maps: fire perimeter boundary maps, current evacuation areas, road closures, rapid evaluation safety assessment (RESA) maps. The City of Santa Rosa’s emergency information page also has maps specific to that city; Heavy also has a roundup. See also Cal Fire’s structural status information map. [The Mercury News]
Previously: Mapping the Northern California Wildfires.
Google Maps Abandons Experimental Calorie Counter
An experimental feature in the iPhone version of Google Maps that measured the calories burned (and equivalent in mini-cupcakes) when walking a route instead has been pulled due to complaints, TechCrunch reports: the feature couldn’t be disabled, the calorie counts were vague and unhelpful, and it could be actively harmful to users with eating disorders. More at Buzzfeed, Slate and The Verge.