Two Ways to Visualize Canada’s Wildfires

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

European Space Agency map of Canada showing average concentration of carboon monoxide for 1 May to 13 June 2023.

The European Space Agency released this map showing the impact on atmospheric carbon monoxide from Canadian forest fires. “Using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission, the image shows the average concentration of carbon monoxide for 1 May to 13 June. The extremely high concentrations, which are depicted in deep tones of orange, can be linked to active fires during the time. The image also shows how this air pollutant was carried as far as New York in the USA and over the Atlantic.”

Also from the ESA: this animated map of fire outbreaks in Canada during the same period.

Previously: Fire and Smoke Forecast Maps; Wildfires in Alberta.

Pierre Novat, French Painter of Ski Resort Panoramas

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Pierre Novat (1928-2007) was another painter of panoramic mountain and ski resort maps working with the same techniques as Henrich Berann and James Niehues. Novat actually predates Niehues, and even Niehues’s mentor Bill Brown: his career ran from the early 1960s until his retirement in 1999. He mainly focused on French ski resorts; for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville he pained a panorama of all the Savoie venues. In March 1992, France 3 aired this profile of Novat that explored his process; the above video relates to a 2014 exposition of his work. (All links in French; see this 2014 blog post from the Ski Adventures blog for something in English.)

Fire and Smoke Forecast Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last week my location was blanketed by smoke from forest fires in northern Quebec, with the air quality index pegged as high as it goes (which is to say, eleven). The iPhone’s default weather app has an air quality map that I made use of—you could actually see the fire hotspots—but there are other wildfire maps out there. For example: NOAA’s experimental interactive map based on its HRRR-Smoke model; AirNow’s Fire and Smoke Map; and the interactive smoke forecast from FireSmoke Canada. [Maps Mania]

The Map Books of 2023 page is finally live. I typically have it up closer to the start of the year, but this hasn’t been a typical year, so it’s taken a while to get to. As always, please let me know if you know of a book that came out or is coming out this year—anything to do with cartography, maps or a related subject—that ought to be listed on this page; I’ll need a publication date and something to link to.

The Lost Art of Map Reading

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“The physical map has the same appeal, probably, as the vinyl record. It’s tactile, it’s there, it’s present—it’s not ephemeral.”

A nice piece from CBC News on the so-called lost art of map reading and paper maps, touching many of the usual points, featuring (among others) the co-owners of my local map store, Ottawa’s World of Maps.

Mapping Anti-Trans Legislation Risk

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A map of the United States showing the risk to the safety and well-being trans people by state legislation.
Erin Reed

There has been an outbreak of anti-trans legislation at the state level in the United States, and Erin Reed has spent the last three years tracking it. Her anti-trans legislative risk map measures the extent to which trans people are endangered by such legislation, whether it’s already on the books or could be the offing before the next election. The map reveals, no surprise, a polarized America: one where some states are racing to put anti-trans laws on the books while others enact protections and set themselves up as safe harbours.

Previously: Mapping Safe Washrooms.

European Night Train Network Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Back on Track map of European night trains, 2023

Night train advocacy group Back on Track has a map showing the current network of European night trains offered by various train operators. It’s colour coded by operator, but individual lines are a bit hard to follow, and using various dashed lines for both less-than-daily service and forthcoming service is a bit confusing. Then again, given the sharp uptick of night train services being offered, it’s almost unavoidable that any map of this sort will be a bit of a jumble: compare with Jug Cerović’s version (previously) to see what I mean.

Leventhal’s Urban Atlas Explorer Atlascope Is Expanding, Seeking Sponsors

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A screenshot of the Leventhal Map Center's Atlascope platform, which presents late 19th- and early 20th-century urban atlases in a web interface overlaid on a modern street map.
Atlascope (screenshot)

Speaking of georeferencing old maps, the Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library has a collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century urban atlases. Their Atlascope platform presents 101 of them in a web interface overlaid on a modern street map. The Leventhal is now looking to expand Atlascope’s coverage beyond the Boston area to towns and counties across Massachusetts, and is raising funds to do so (it can apparently take 60 hours to process one atlas). Details on sponsoring an atlas here. See their Instagram post.

GeoTIFFs Explained

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Neueste General- Post- und Strassen Karte der Oesterreichischen Monarchie : mit politischer Eintheilung der einzelnen Provinzen derselben und Angabe der wichtigsten Bergwerke u. besuchtesten Mineralquellen : nebst einer bildlichen Darstellung des Monarchie-Wapens, so wie sämmtlicher Provinzial-Wapen
Neueste General- Post- und Strassen Karte der Oesterreichischen Monarchie, 1854. Map, hand-coloured, 71 × 104 cm. Library of Congress.

The blog of the Library of Congress’s Geography and Maps Division isn’t the first place you’d expect an explanation of the GeoTIFF format (basically, an image file in TIFF format that includes georeferencing metadata, so that the image can be projected on a map grid). But georeferencing old maps so that they can be placed on a modern map grid is definitely a thing, and Carissa Pastuch’s piece, “The Secret Life of GeoTIFFs,” looks at GeoTIFFs through the lens of an experimental dataset of georeferenced late 19th- and early 20th-century Austro-Hungarian maps.