Can a map still be considered a map if it doesn’t have a north arrow? Yes. A north arrow is an optional map accompaniment and you should think critically about your map to determine for yourself if it needs a north arrow or not. For what it’s worth, often a map should not have a north arrow. … Continue reading North Arrow Necessity
Here’s how to stack up some tile layers and blend them up to concoct a basemap that wouldn’t look out of place in 1890. Except that you wouldn’t have anywhere to plug in your monitor so it would be hard to show it to people back then. Ok bring a small generator. Wait, all these … Continue reading Vintage Retro Old-School 1890s Basemap for ArcGIS Pro
One of the great joys of working here at Esri is the opportunity to collaborate with amazing people. Recently I had the opportunity to present at the User Conference about thematic mapping, with Sarah Bell and Kenneth Field. It was a lot of fun and we all surprised each other with what we made from the same source … Continue reading How to make this thematic map, and stuff
Our human visual systems collect light from a pretty narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. But there is so much more light to see. Radar systems use photons with much longer wavelengths that can break through clouds and smoke, and because the energy is sent from the sensor and bounces back, radar doesn’t need the … Continue reading Detect and measure wildfires with Sentinel-1 Explorer
Sure, everyone loves a good raised area-of-interest effect. But what about a peeled edge area of interest? It’s a snazzy trick and maybe just the sort of flair that your map needs! And it’s simpler than maybe you’d guess. To give your area of interest a peeled edge effect, you just combine a dark gradient … Continue reading How to make a “peeled edge” area of interest effect
The new Historical Topo Map Explorer is out of beta and ready for you to dive into a collection of over 180,000 beautiful vintage USGS topo maps! Use this updated Living Atlas app to geographically browse, download, export, and even animate, these cartographic objects of joy. Here’s how… 0:00 Adventurous introduction0:23 Navigating the map and finding topos0:40 … Continue reading Find and download vintage USGS topo maps
I was watching the Steven Spielberg 1977 classic, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with the family last night and nerded out when I saw a character that claimed to be a cartographer. I always do. It was the cartographer who recognized that the signals the aliens sent were coordinates. This is how they knew … Continue reading Close Encounters of the Cartographic Kind
Here are a few flavors of a technique, illumination cartography, that uses data to shed light on its underlying basemap. There’s something satisfying about presenting a phenomenon as revealing geography rather than obscuring it. 0:00 Illuminating intro0:06 Adding some lighthouses from ArcGIS Online0:16 Firefly point symbology0:49 Darkening the underlying imagery basemap with Effects1:11 Illuminating with … Continue reading Illumination Cartography
Of course maps are just the most fascinating and information dense graphical information products around…in my unbiased opinion. I can, and do, go on and on about the deep and pervasive benefits of spatial representations. But…well…sometimes a map, strictly speaking, can have some issues. That’s ok though, because maps are here to fix the problem … Continue reading How to Make a Hexagonal Cartogram in ArcGIS Pro
Here’s how to whip up a three decade animation of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, using Landsat Explorer. And it only takes a few minutes. … 0:00 Intro0:20 Assembling the animation1:47 Checking the result2:14 Saving an animation as an MP42:44 More animation examples3:33 Closing … Here are direct links to the animations I show in this … Continue reading How to Make a Historical Animation with Landsat
