Cartography: 06/01/2005

A weblog for members of the Canadian Cartographic Association and other individuals interested in all things cartographic

Easternmost point in North America?

Published Wednesday, June 29, 2005 by CCAer.

Looks like some folks are in a tizzy about what is included in North America. The issue seems to centre around the accuracy of a Parks Canada sign that lists Newfoundland’s Cape Spear as the easternmost point in North America. Others argue that Greenland is North America's easternmost landmass.

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Google Maps expands its satellite imagery

Published Wednesday, June 22, 2005 by CCAer.

Google Maps has expanded its satellite image coverage of the earth’s surface. Map data for areas outside of Canada, the United States and Great Britian is still lacking in detail, however. As already the case with these 3 countries, the detail of the satellite imagery varies from Landsat 7 images to air photos. Expect to see the Google Sightseeing catalog expand significantly.

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A Literary Atlas of Canada

Published Tuesday, June 21, 2005 by CCAer.

CBC’s week-night sometimes thought-provoking Ideas is running a 10 episode program on the Literary Atlas of Canada, hosted by Noah Richler. It focuses on the impact of Canadian fiction writers on the Canadian view of place - in the broad and specific sense. I think this series has been running for a while because I recall hearing bits and pieces of The Company Town episode. A book of the same title is scheduled to appear in January of 2006, published by McClelland and Stewart. I daresay the focus is more on the literary aspect than the atlas. One wonders how many maps will appear in the book.

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Thematic Globes

Published Thursday, June 16, 2005 by CCAer.

The UN released an atlas entitled Worldprocessor has posted about 70 different globe images displaying various thematic data such as acid rain, positions of nuclear submarines, earthquakes and refugee movements. Content is displayed on images of globes. There is no order to any of these and the entire effort seems more artistic than cartographic. There is little or no explanation of content on most globes and some globes represent unusual ideas. The blank globe is, well, blank - no islands, oceans or continents, just a simple grey ball. Another globe focuses on nameless places.

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Logarithmic Map of the Universe

Published Tuesday, June 14, 2005 by CCAer.

J. Richard Gott and Mario Juric have produced a conformal map of the universe illustrating recent discoveries, ranging from Kuiper belt objects in the Solar system, to the galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This map projection, based on the logarithm map of the complex plane, preserves shapes locally, and yet is able to display the entire range of astronomical scales from the Earth's neighborhood to the cosmic microwave background. The conformal nature of the projection, preserving shapes locally, may be of particular use for analyzing large scale structure. Prominent in the map is a Sloan Great Wall of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, 80% longer than the Great Wall discovered by Geller and Huchra and therefore the largest observed structure in the universe.

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Ancient map brings record price

Published Wednesday, June 08, 2005 by CCAer.

The Globe and Mail reports today that one of Martin Waldseemueller's group's maps fetched £545,600 at an auction. I'm looking forward to the time when one of my maps will bring in a similar amount.

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UN releases atlas

Published Monday, June 06, 2005 by CCAer.

The UN released an atlas entitled One Planet, Many Peoples on June 4. It is available free of charge electronically in pdf or can be purchased at the slightly higher cost of $150USD. This is not so much an atlas as a collection of images displaying the effects of humans on the earth's service. Satellite images from the 1970s or 1980s are placed side by side with ones from the last couple of years. It is an astounding look at the impact that expanding cities, damming rivers, diverting water courses, irrigating land, and cutting down forest have on the natural landscape. If nothing else, it is an an eye-opening look at what remote sensing can reveal.

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