In geography, an antipode is the exact other side of the world from any given location. When I was a kid, we always used to talk about digging a hole so deep that you’d exit in China. But we foolish Michigan kids didn’t realize that if we really dug a hole straight down, presuming we survived the … Continue reading Turn Your World Inside-Out with Antipodes
This map was made for the lovely folks at Conservation International, to help with an ongoing project regarding stewardship of undersea environments and ecosystems. It is the second in a series, the first being the Salas y Gómez and Nazca undersea ridges. Here’s a how-to video series for that first map, and technique in general. … Continue reading The Emperor Seamounts
Here’s how you can apply a dynamic tinting to vintage black and white hillshade images to create a retro-vibe hand-tinted antique photo sort of aesthetic. Also there is just something lovely about georeferencing the terrain art of cartographers of the past. If you want to skip to the action, jump to 3:10. It’s a “luminosity” … Continue reading Colorize Vintage Black and White Hillshade Maps
This is the map that introduces chapter 4 of GIS for Science Volume 3. It uses modern forest density data from the US Forest Service to give 3D elevation to an 1883 map of the same thing. Trippy. It was a fast and fun collaboration with Chris Oswalt and Hobie Perry of the Forest Service and … Continue reading Make a Vintage Forestry Map 3D With Modern Forestry Data
GIS for Science Volume 3 is a wonderful new book stuffed with examples of the work going on in our spatial science community. Chapter 6, “Conserving the Last Ocean Frontiers” kicks off with a giant map of the Salas y Gómez and Nazca undersea ridges in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Chile. There are … Continue reading How to Make this Seafloor Map
How do you make the cover for GIS for Science volume 3? You have amazing colleagues like Dawn Wright and Christian Harder who work at the speed of trust! This cover came together remarkably fast, and was a fun and interactive experience with creative collaborators and top-notch content providers. The Half-Earth Project features prominently in this volume so it was a fast … Continue reading How to make the map on the cover of GIS for Science volume 3
—Witten with Sean Breyer— When you are a global Geographic Information Technology company with a globe in your logo, you don’t shy away from the opportunity to have a great big glorious 8.5-foot diameter illuminated rotating globe in your new office building. But what sort of globe cartography do you design? How should this gigantic … Continue reading It’s a Giant Globe!
Geography, and the maps that pour out of it, is just a blast. But sometimes we work so hard on the data and analysis that we don’t have time to “make it pretty.” But designing a map is more than just arts and crafts, it’s a critical step in communicating all of that investment. In … Continue reading A Map-Making Walk-And-Talk
Hit play go fullscreen and kick back to five minutes of the annual pulse of winter to summer. Here’s how to make it. Continue reading 5 Minutes in the Chill Zone
Here is a map of the ten most popular US National parks, by visitor count. Colleague Ted Burns suggested I update (from the original a few years ago) it with newer data; the new data only required a couple of swapped places and I am lazy so I did. Numbers come from this list and the shapes … Continue reading Updated Top Ten US National Parks
