NASA Earth Observatory has before-and-after satellite imagery showing the impact of the destruction of Ukraine’s Kakhovka Dam last month. The Kakhovka Reservoir is emptying out (above), the irrigation canals that relied on that reservoir are drying out, and there was flooding downriver of the dam in the immediate aftermath of the breach.
Downloadable maps are coming to Apple Maps in iOS 17 this fall. Ars Technica looks at how they’ll work, and how they’ll compare to Google Maps’ offline maps (at the moment—which to be sure is with the iOS 17 public beta—Apple’s offline maps take up much more space but also offer more detail).
James Killick considers Apple’s forthcoming Vision Pro headset and wonders whether something might not be afoot in the mapping space. “The real kicker for geospatial is its ability to immerse you in a truly 3D experience. […] So given a truly immersive 3D experience is possible, think of the wonders it will do for maps and mapping in general.”
After expanding its new maps to central Europe—Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia—in April, Apple brought detailed city maps to Paris, cycling directions to the whole of France, and its new maps to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Slovakia in June. As usual, Justin O’Beirne has all the details at the above links.
Anything mashing up maps and typewriters is guaranteed to get my attention (I have 37 of the latter and rather a lot more of the former). So I have no choice but to share R. J. Andrews’s “Typewriter,” an elevation map of California created on a manual typewriter.
Created by layering combinations of nearly 2,500 keystrokes (I, H, X, and O) with a 1953 Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter on Masa 77gsm paper from Japan. Based on a California Albers projection at approximately 1:5,000,000 scale.
Well, that’s one way to visualize the rate of continental drift.
Fresh from a course on the materiality—“i.e. the physical characteristics of maps: size, paper, format, printing method, color, etc.”—of maps, the Library of Congress’s Amelia Raines explores a few maps from her home state of Michigan in terms of the production methods behind them, and the context in which they were published (e.g. as part of a book).
Geographical magazine has a short history of the New York City subway map and its controversies. This has been a fraught and hotly contested topic for most of the last 50 years, and Jules Stewart’s article can’t go into nearly enough depth to capture it all, but it could serve as a decent entry point for those not in the know. Drawing rather heavily on the expertise of Peter Lloyd (previously), Stewart covers the subject from the first subway maps to where the MTA goes from here.
Previously: A Naïve Look at New York’s Subway Map.
The Philippines is just as keen as Vietnam is to ban films showing the nine-dash line, and has done so in the past. Nevertheless, the Philippine censor board has decided to allow the release of the forthcoming Barbie movie, but has asked Warner Bros. to blur the offending map, which is apparently only eight dashes (and therefore okay) and too cartoonish to be linked to a controversial line on a real map. Coverage: BBC News, Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Variety.
That follows the Warner Bros. line; last Thursday Variety reported the Warner Bros. response to Barbie being banned in Vietnam: “‘The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,’ a spokesperson for the Warner Bros. Film Group told Variety. ‘The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the “real world.” It was not intended to make any type of statement.’”
(Based on the screenshots I’ve seen, all it is is a dashed line extending east from a wildly inaccurate Asia; there are dashed lines elsewhere on the map that suggest routes more than borders.)
Out today from HarperCollins (and Goose Lane in Canada): The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans by Laura Trethewey. “Scientists, investors, militaries, and private explorers are competing in this epic venture to obtain an accurate reading of this vast terrain and understand its contours and environment. In The Deepest Map, Laura Trethewey chronicles this race to the bottom. Following global efforts around the world, she documents Inuit-led crowdsourced mapping in the Arctic as climate change alters the landscape, a Texas millionaire’s efforts to become the first man to dive to the deepest point in each ocean, and the increasingly fraught question of whether and how to mine the deep sea.” Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
The latest episode of Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones’s all-too-infrequent series Map Men looks at why north is at the top of modern maps, and features examples of maps where this was, or is, not the case, and why.
For something a bit more … academic, see Mick Ashworth’s Why North Is Up: Map Conventions and Where They Came From (Bodleian, 2019).
Previously: The Origins of North at the Top of Maps; The Idea of North.
Netflix has removed Flight to You from its service in Vietnam, Variety reports, because the Chinese drama has scenes in nine episodes that show the nine-dash line on a map. The nine-dash line depicts China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Vietnam (among other countries) bitterly contests—to the point of banning depictions of said line in all media.
Previously: The Nine-Dash Line Gets ‘Barbie’ Banned in Vietnam.
The History of Cartography Project’s fourth volume, Cartography in the European Enlightenment, is now available online for free download in PDF format. This book, edited by Matthew Edney and Mary Sponberg Pedley, came out in hardcover in the depths of the pandemic; free online access a few years after publication follows the precedent of previous volumes in the series.
This means that all five volumes that have been published to date can be downloaded for free (here). The remaining volume—volume five, Cartography in the Nineteenth Century—is in preparation. When that final book is published, it will close out a project that has taken more than four decades to come to fruition.
Previously: Forty Years of the History of Cartography Project; The History of Cartography’s Fourth Volume, Now (Almost) Out; History of Cartography Project Updates.
The upcoming film Barbie has been banned in Vietnam, the Washington Post reports, because it apparently depicts a map showing the nine-dash line—the line that depicts China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. That line, and those claims, enclose the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam also claims as its territory. Blame Hollywood’s aversion to getting banned in the much larger Chinese market for not showing the nine-dash line, I guess; while Vietnam has a history of banning films for this reason (including, per the nine-dash line Wikipedia page, the recent films Abominable and Uncharted), it’s not remotely the only state that indulges in this sort of thing.
If you’re trying out Mastodon in the wake of Twitter’s latest fail (and given the uptick in new followers I’ve seen over the past few days, it seems more than a few of you are) but aren’t sure who to follow, here are two curated lists of cartography, geospatial, GIS and map-related accounts on Mastodon for you to follow: one from Florian Ledermann, the other from Jorge Sanz.
(The Map Room’s Mastodon account is on both lists. If you’re looking for an instance to join, mapstodon.space is aimed at map and geospatial professionals and enthusiasts.)
Previously: The Map Room on Mastodon; Mastodon for Mappers; A Mastodon Update.
French publisher Conspiration Éditions has announced the forthcoming publication of a huge, luxury edition of the Cassini map. The 18th-century map is, famously, the first comprehensive map of France, and the first map to be based on triangulation. Their edition is enormous: at 56 × 65 cm (or 22 × 25.6 inches), it’s big enough to show each plate as a two-page spread at full size (Conspiration is reprinting a hand-coloured original apparently owned by Marie-Antoinette). At 15 kg (33 lbs), the book is also pretty heavy, and includes a foldable stand. It is, however, not remotely cheap: it’s being published in a limited edition of 900 copies that will be released for sale in April 2024 at the rather stunning price of €2,400; 300 copies can be purchased before the end of October 2023 at the low, low subscription price of €1,800.
Previously: La Carte de Cassini.
Three books that have come out or are coming out this year that deal with maps of early modern Europe:
Navigations: The Portuguese Discoveries and the Renaissance by Malyn Newitt (Reaktion, 24 Apr). “Navigations re-examines the Portuguese voyages of discovery by placing them in their medieval and Renaissance settings. It shows how these voyages grew out of a crusading ethos, as well as long-distance trade with Asia and Africa and developments in map-making and ship design. The slave trade, the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews and the intercontinental spread of plants and animals gave these voyages long-term global significance.” £25/$40. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World by Meredith F. Small (Pegasus, 6 Jun). A book about the famous Fra Mauro map. “Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith F. Small reveals how Fra Mauro’s mappamundi made cartography into a science rather than a practice based on religion and ancient myths.” $29. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
Frames that Speak: Cartouches on Early Modern Maps by Chet Van Duzer (Brill, 25 May ebook, 19 Jul print). I’ve been following Van Duzer’s work on horror vacui, the lack of empty spaces on maps, for some time (1, 2); that work seems to be taken up by at least the first chapter on this new book on cartouches, which is available for free as an open-access download. “This lavishly illustrated book is the first systematic exploration of cartographic cartouches, the decorated frames that surround the title, or other text or imagery, on historic maps. It addresses the history of their development, the sources cartographers used in creating them, and the political, economic, historical, and philosophical messages their symbols convey. Cartouches are the most visually appealing parts of maps, and also spaces where the cartographer uses decoration to express his or her interests—so they are key to interpreting maps. The book discusses thirty-three cartouches in detail, which range from 1569 to 1821, and were chosen for the richness of their imagery.” $144. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
More: Map Books of 2023.
