Today NASA released a set of vegetation maps based on data from the Suomi NPP satellite. Flickr photoset, YouTube video. The maps depict a year’s worth of changes in vegetation. “High values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, or NDVI, represent dense green functioning vegetation and low NDVI values represent sparse green vegetation or vegetation under stress from limiting conditions, such as drought.” Image credit: NASA/
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Map of All American Rivers
Nelson Minar has created a vector tile map of all the rivers in the United States. It’s an amazing map, one that is being compared with Ben Fry’s All Streets (previously) or this more recent map of U.S. roads. Only it’s rivers-only, not roads-only. Via io9 and Kottke.
Apple Maps on the Mac
A Mac version of Apple’s maps was among the new features announced for Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday. Coverage: 9to5Mac, The Verge. I’m surprised to see that they’re doing it as a standalone application rather than on the Web, which is what I’d expected. One trick of the app is that you can send turn-by-turn directions to your iOS device. There’s an API, so developers will also be able to integrate the maps into their own apps. If they want. Cue old and tired jokes about Apple maps’ quality in three, two …
Mapping Antarctica’s Bedrock
NASA has released an updated map of the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet; the map, called Bedmap2, adds considerable detail—a tighter grid and millions of data points—to its decade-old predecessor. The image above exaggerates vertical scale by a factor of 17 to increase visibility. See also this short video.
A Renaissance Globemaker’s Toolbox
Briefly noted: A Renaissance
Globemaker’s Toolbox: Johannes Schöner and the Revolution of Modern Science, John Hessler’s biography of German priest, astronomer and mathematician Johannes Schöner (1477-1547), an early globemaker who, among other things, created the first printed celestial globe gores as well as globe gores for Martin Waldseemüller’s world maps.
The survival of Schöner’s notes and annotations is unique in the history of cartography; not only do they show his thinking about theoretical and practical geography, but they also reveal the art of mapmaking during his lifetime. John Hessler discusses Schöner’s opinions on the canonical geography of Ptolemy, his reaction to the new discoveries of Columbus and Vespucci, and his involvement in the new astronomy of Copernicus. Schöner’s surviving notebooks, manuscripts, and associations with other scientists of the period offer unprecedented insight into the history of these materials, and into the geographical and astronomical concerns that fuelled the birth of modern science development during this critical period in its development.
My Own Private Westeros
Here’s someone building—by hand—a scale model of Westeros. Updated with photos at every step of construction. Madness! I approve. Via Boing Boing.
Here Be Sea Monsters
Just found out about Chet Van Duzer’s Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, a new book out this month from British Library Publishing, which explores the monsters drawn on maps from the 10th to the 16th century. From the publisher:
The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps, whether swimming vigorously, gambolling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, are one of the most visually engaging elements on these maps, and yet they have never been carefully studied. The subject is important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the ‘marvellous’ and of western conceptions of the ocean. Moreover, the sea monsters depicted on maps can supply important insights into the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them.
I may have to get this.
A Topographic Map of Titan
The Cassini team has released a global topographic map of Saturn’s moon Titan. What makes this map interesting is the fact that, due to its thick atmosphere, Titan can only be mapped by radar during Cassini’s close flybys. As a result, only half of its surface has been imaged, and only 11 percent has topography data. For this map, the remainder was, well, extrapolated:
Lorenz’s team used a mathematical process called splining—effectively using smooth, curved surfaces to “join” the areas between grids of existing data. “You can take a spot where there is no data, look how close it is to the nearest data, and use various approaches of averaging and estimating to calculate your best guess,” he said. “If you pick a point, and all the nearby points are high altitude, you’d need a special reason for thinking that point would be lower. We’re mathematically papering over the gaps in our coverage.”
Topo maps of parts of Titan have been released before, but not for the entire moon. See previous posts on The Map Room: Titan in Stereo; Topography of Titan.
Google Maps Redesigned
Google announced a complete redesign of Google Maps at their I/O developer conference yesterday. The new maps are vector-based, take up the entire browser window and change based on the context—highlighting certain streets, for example, based on a search—and your usage patterns. It’s also apparently quite resource intensive: these are maps designed for fast processors and fast Internet connections. It’s just an invite-only preview at the moment. For coverage see Engadget and The Verge.
OpenStreetMap’s New Map Editor
OpenStreetMap has launched a new map editing interface that runs, for the first time, in HTML5. (Potlatch, the previous web-based map editor, uses Flash, and JOSM runs in Java, which I always thought was ironic for an open project.) The editor, called iD, is live now, and is designed to make editing the map more accessible to beginning mapmakers. I’ve given it a quick try this morning. My summary judgment is that if you have any experience using another editor, you should stick with it. iD is far slower than Potlatch at the moment, and does things sufficiently differently that you might have a hard time finding things. I made a mess trying to edit the existing map. But will it lower the barrier to making new contributions, particularly for casual or non-technical contributors? I hope so.
Fictional Worlds Map-Making Competition
A map-making competition asking participants to submit maps of their fictional worlds? That’s precisely the sort of thing I should bring to your attention, now that it’s been brought to mine. First announced in February; deadline May 21.
Mapping Manhattan
A new book collects hand-drawn maps of Manhattan submitted by both anonymous and notable New Yorkers: Becky Cooper’s Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers.
It started with Manhattan in the summer of 2009 when Becky was still an undergraduate at Harvard University. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, as well as her own experience creating a map of New York’s public art, Becky walked the length of Broadway, distributing over a thousand letterpress-printed outlines of the borough to the widest variety of New Yorkers she could find.
The maps she got back have been posted online, and now there’s a book. Fascinating project. Brain Pickings and The New York Times Magazine have profiles (with image galleries). Via io9.
The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers
Via Kottke, news of a new map book that sounds rather interesting: A Map of the World: The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers, described by the publisher as “a compelling collection of work by a new generation of original and sought-after designers, illustrators, and mapmakers. This work showcases specific regions, characterizes local scenes, generates moods, and tells stories beyond sheer navigation. From accurate and surprisingly detailed representations to personal, naïve, and modernistic interpretations, the featured projects from around the world range from maps and atlases inspired by classic forms to cartographic experiments and editorial illustrations.” Samples on the publisher’s website. Many of them I’ve seen before online; I’m happy to see them reprinted.
Fifty Equal States Redux
In 2010 I blogged about Neil Freeman’s reimagined United States where the 50 states were redrawn so that each state had the same population. (That map had been circulating for a few years prior to that.) Neil has since produced a new version at the same address, with new boundaries and state names on a nicer map. Though it’s just as thought-provoking. Via Kottke.
Lunar Gravity Map
NASA has released a free-air gravity map of the Moon: “If the Moon were a perfectly smooth sphere of uniform density, the gravity map would be a single, featureless color, indicating that the force of gravity at a given elevation was the same everywhere. But like other rocky bodies in the solar system, including Earth, the Moon has both a bumpy surface and a lumpy interior. … The free-air gravity map shows deviations from the mean, the gravity that a cueball Moon would have.” Gravity data comes from the GRAIL mission, with the digital elevation model provided by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter laser altimeter. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.