Xtreme Cartage!

I know this guy down in the Yucatan, Mexico that is a pretty Xtreme mapper. Sam Meacham is a cave diver by trade, but has recently gotten into education. He is trying to prove to the powers that be (government, etc...) down there in Playa del Carmon, that pollutants that are dumped into these sunken pools ("Cenotes", Mayan word for "well") is eventually deposited out into the ocean, because much of the Yucatan is connected under ground by a vast underwater cave system. So he is trying to map these underwater caves and map how and where they connect. If you ever have the time and the space, download BBC/Discovery Channel show, "Secrets of the Maya Underworld"(this link will bring you to a page to download the movie). It is well worth the download and has some spectacular underwater filming. Though I should warn you, it is not for the squeamish/claustrophobic. There are a few scenes in which he gets stuck in a pinch.


I worked with Sam down in the Yucatan with all kinds of funky wildlife, such as pumas, scorpions and many fun poisonous snakes. And then there was the plant life, many kinds of things that cause a lot of pain and itchiness. Sam dives into one cenote and then surfaces at another mapping and gathering GPS points to create a map of underground currents that feed out to the ocean.

Techno Mapping

Sensing Things Remotely

Mapping technology is a very fast growing industry using 3D maps, satellite imagery, and many different instruments and sensors that measure all kinds of things. We call this Remote Sensing. These sensors can measure heat, light, radiation wavelengths and much more. Much of what we use in today's mapping techniques are made possible by remote sensing.

I used to work with an instrument (in the picture above) that was used for analyzing the health of different kinds of vegetation. I analyzed white pine (Pinus strobus) for the most part, in an attempt to gather data on air quality in the New England region. The instrument is called the VIRIS (Visible InfRed Intelligent Spectrometer). Basically, it measured water content in the pine needles and graphed it to look like the graph below:

I also used the instrument down in the Yucatan, Mexico. It is never easy bringing anything called a VIRIS across any border and I don't recommend it. The instrument also requires total darkness, except for the light source which is very hot (basically recreating the sun). And when it is stiflingly hot, like in the Yucatan, it is not very pleasant to work around. Below is a picture of us working in a scorpion infested shed.


And no, I wasn't kidding about the scorpions (beer cap for size purposes only, this is science! Right?)...

Dimension of 3

Using 3D or 3 dimensional imagery with maps is a relatively new form of mapping. With the invention of the computer there have been all kinds of breakthroughs in how we can manipulate and view maps. 3D mapping and design is now a part of video games and movies too. The image above is an example of art made using 3D. As with any new form of creation, there are skeptics and there are people who welcome the new forms with open arms.

Google has set the precedent on software that uses 3D mapping and is easily accessible to the public. Companies like Microsoft and NASA are struggling to keep up with Google Earth, but have made fairly good attempts at creating something similar. There is debate over what the best software is when comparing Google Earth to other programs. So I decided to give them all a try. First of all, I am a Google Earth fan and have been for some time now. So I may have a bit of bias, but tried to keep an open mind.

I found NASA's World Wind to be very useful for example, you can overlay topo maps over the scene you are looking at. It has some quirks but is a very good 3D mapping program over all. Microsoft's Virtual Earth on the other hand, I found to be "not so much". It took a very long time to download, and uses Internet Explorer as the window. In all I find Google Earth to be the best, but each have their own unique tools and uses.

I wrote the following for a paper in last semesters Mapping Planet Earth class and thought it would be a good story for this blog: Having worked a good amount with Google Earth myself, I have decided to explain an interesting phenomenon I experienced discovering Google Earth:

At the time Google Earth came out, I was working for both the University of New Hampshire and the Museum of Science in Boston. I had been asked to produce a “Spatial DELE”, which was to be a “Spatial Data (or Digital) Enhanced Learning Experience”, that young children around New England would have access to in their schools (elementary up to high school) to better their understanding of the spatial world around them.

I had been slaving over making a demo DELE using IKONOS, Lansat TM, and MODIS images and integrating them into a PowerPoint “guide” for teachers to use with their students. I had been working on it for a few months and thought I had created something extremely valuable and marketable. Then at an annual meeting of about 30 teachers, I introduced what I had been creating for several months which was essentially a VERY crude Google Earth. At the end of my presentation, a teacher asked me if I had seen Google Earth, which I had heard of, but had not actually taken the time to look at. Needless to say after the conference, I checked out Google Earth and found my presentation to need to take a fairly different direction. I quickly incorporated Google Earth into the DELE and the DELE became more of a “How to use Google Earth” guide.

The above image is of San Fransisco using Google Earth.

Back in My Day!

When exploring maps of the old and new, I remembered Pat showing this cover of the New Yorker in class. I found this article on StrangeMaps and thought it needed to be included. The article is about how New Yorkers view New York as the capital of the world.

Now even though I love New York, I have to add a map of Boston to balance my Ying Yang love for the 2 cities. This map is of the city of Boston from 1806 and shows one of the best places to eat in town, Faneuil Hall. This large building (aka Quincy Market) which houses all kinds of food, was one of my hangover cures for the weekends when visiting my best friend who attended Suffolk University. So after a few to many Guinness' in the Boston Common, we would eat supremely greasy food and chase pigeons. Ah, to be 19 again...

Now, new maps have become interactive allowing users to be able to "Fly To" and get directions to and from all over the world. The use of 3D design is also becoming much more efficient and used in programs like Google Earth. Soon paper maps may become a thing of the past, though there is nothing quite like being able to look at a hard copy of a map.

Fox in the Henhouse

Well, well, well. If it's not my favorite news station. In exploring the topic of "Mapping the News", I tried and tried not to go to the Fox News website, but I eventually gave in. It is hard to explain in words how I feel about most everything the Fox network produces (except for the Simpson's, but even they are becoming suspect nowadays). I guess the best words I can think of are Fear Mongers. When I got to the site, I had a chuckle with the Politics menu options. Almost all of the options have something to do with terror and or war.

They even have a Sept. 11 category that if you click on, you are brought to a page about the 5 year anniversary of the attacks. Now I'm no mathematician, but wasn't that a while ago? Like 6 months ago when all the networks aired shitty movies about 9/11 and blamed Clinton? Odd that this is news, at least in my opinion. If the news is that old, why have it on the main political site? I do have to point out that there are no dates on any article that I looked at, this seems odd coming from a news site.

In an interesting experiment, I typed in Fear Monger into the Fox News search engine and got an article on Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?. Now I thought that we had figured this out, that even good old Mr. Dubya acknowledged global warming which is a miracle in and of itself. In this article there are a lot of opinions that question global warming and say that those of us that are believers, are just wasting money on research and calling those believers Fear Mongers. If we should fear anything it is this...

Also, did anybody see the show "Real Time with Bill Mahr"? Those that saw it may realize he makes some good points. But Fox News is going to be all over him calling him a terrorist. Hopefully he has the balls to stay his ground and not apologize.

War, Hoa! What is it Good For?

After researching a few animated maps on the web, I found this site from Wordpress initially which is written in Spanish, though the blog above has been translated. But from that blog, I found a site about American Leadership and War and was impressed by how well made the animated map is. It is highly interactive and allows the user to watch a brief overview of all the wars America has been involved in showing a body count for "Fore Fathers", Republican and Democrat created wars.

Then I noticed the History of Religion animated map and thought this might be of some use to the class as well, however it does not cover Mormonism or the State of Nevada. Still, a very interesting perspective of time versus the spreading of different belief systems.


For the academic article, I found a site on Google Scholar, which is article about Descartes (aka IRIS), a software used to for animation of maps. Interesting article, but didn't seem worth $31.28 plus tax.

You Don't Know Beans!

I have chosen Boston as a part of "The American Identity". As a fellow blogger in Cartography class pointed out to me, "most Americans don't know their own identity". I thought about this statement for a bit and realized that it is quite possibly true for many Americans. So I decided to hit some of my eastern roots up for some good old identity! Now I realize many who read this blog may never have set foot in Boston, so I'm using this blog to broaden some horizons of you westerners and give you a taste of some Beantown love.

I tried to figure out a way to make this interesting and not just a factual snooze about the Boston Tea Party and Ben Franklin (but if you want some of that check it out at epodunk). And part of me would love to rehash some memories from 2004, when Curt Schilling, that dumb ass Johnny Damon and my man Big Pappy (David Ortiz) led my Red Sox to defeat the ultimate axis of evil, the New York Yankees. But that's a whole other Oprah. So instead, I'm going to tell you about a good portion of American Identity Boston style, which is drinking beer!

For 2 years now, I have been a part of something truly beautiful and great, a Annual Boston Pub Crawl! This idea of my Father in laws, happens every year a few days after Christmas, and takes place all over Boston and parts of Cambridge. Below is a map from Google with the 10 different bars we went to this year:

We have a pint at each bar and some good conversations which end up in muttering gibberish towards the end of the crawl. But good times are had by all. An interesting tidbit of information you might not find on to many websites or guidebooks is that the Harvard Bridge (located almost in the middle of the picture above) was measured in "Smoots" which is the name of a student at MIT. The entire bridge is measured in "Smoots" and they are painted all along the bridge (this full story can be found here: Smoots). For the real interesting part, go to Google Earth and use the measuring tool, and click on the increments of measurement button where it says, miles, kilometers, etc...and notice the last increment is "Smoots". How many Smoots do you get when you measure the bridge? Check it out.


After to many Smoots and a few to many bars. Cheers!

Dr. Strange Maps

Maps, Fact or Fiction: For this blog, I chose to use some of the maps found on the Strange Maps website. And out of those maps, this one seemed to be the most compelling to me, because I'm not sure if it is fact or fiction. I mean, it is entirely possible that our current president actually believes and perceives the world this way, according to Dubya.

It is tough now days to accept what is fact and what is fiction. With the Internet allowing almost anyone to post what ever they want, it is hard to decipher truth from reality. It becomes even more difficult when looking at blog entries, because they are specifically someones opinion which doesn't always make them right no matter how convincing they may seem. For example, I found this blog entry on Strange Maps, and to me this seems entirely possible that this was at one time a possibility in the Mormon religion (see map below). The map above is of a proposed State that the Mormons attempted to get from the US government. Supposedly this proposal never reached Statehood because it would have "created a state based on a separate religion, and it was probably too ambitious in its scope" (5th paragraph). It is interesting to note for one, the word "Deseret" is not spelled like the word desert. Apparently the name of the proposed state was based on a Bible passage from the LDS Bible, which means honeybee. It is also interesting to compare this proposed state map with a map of the Great Basin...

I got the map above from Wikipedia. I suppose it is because the Mormon map was based on the mountain ranges that form the Great Basin, but it is interesting to note on the Deseret map that Los Angeles would have been part of the Mormon State. This in its self is quite boggling to the mind...imagine what movies would be like if instead of Hollywood, we had "Mormonwood". I shutter to think.

Good, Bad and Ugly Maps

Maps can be either good, bad and sometimes they can be pretty ugly. The design of a map is crucial to how it is perceived by the viewer. For instance, if a map is not centered correctly or there is too much text, the map can deter the reader from focusing on the key points of the map.

The above map is a good example of what not to do when creating a map. As pretty and colorful as this map is, I can’t for the life of me figure out what information this map is trying to convey. For one, there is no “key” to tell the reader what each color means. And above all, a big “no, no!” goes out to this maps author for stating on the map that it is “highly inaccurate”. This defeats the purpose of the map and makes it pretty much irrelevant.

This map on the other hand, clearly indicates the maps purpose and includes a key to help explain the different data represented. Though the squared numbers are not defined, but one assumes they are the “percent of popular votes”.