State Of The Art: Blogging on Maps

After looking over the many different blogs posted about maps by other mapgeeks other than who is in our class, I found that they were very graphically rich, which is what we are also striving for. It was interesting to read the blogs from the students out of Reno, NV and how this affected what maps were used. A lot of their maps were focused on Nevada and the surrounding states. This gave a completely different perspective because I am used to reading the blogs posted by my classmates in Massachusetts.

I then went on to look at the more professional blogs on cartography and GIS. Many of these links brought me to blogs that seemed more like articles out of a scholarly journal than a blog. Some blogs were people just blogging about their thoughts dealing with maps and map things, while others used it as a form of publication without having to go through the whole publication process. This is a great way to get ideas out there and in the open for others to thing about and critique. One of these blogs that caught my eye was the GIS for Archaeology and CRM link. This blog written by a mapgeek named Matt, combined archaeology and GIS to recreate a scene in Valley Forge National Historic Park in Pennsylvania. Matt took the crumbling foundation and put it into sketchup. From here the mill was recreated, along with an 1890 photo that was recreated and the sketchup mill was placed in the photo. This makes me wonder what else people can unearth, recreate in google sketchup, and then place into current or old photos to show what it would have looked like. Here’s a picture of the mill incorporated into the 1890 photo.

Map Games

When asked to blog about maps the first thing that popped into my head was when I was in middle school, we were learning the states the create the United States and where they are in respect to each other. I am sure that there are still several of these "board games" left but for the most part a lot of these games are online. When I did a google search for map games it came up with a lot of these types of games, spatial recognition, or naming which shape is which state. There was also a game that puts you up against an opponent and each player guesses where the question is located on a world map. This also made me think of a map game I heard about but totally forget the name of. It consists of a bunch of people getting the coordinates to the first piece of the puzzle. Using these coordinates, the players set out and find this piece which has more coordinates inside. Many times these clues were at the top of a mountain or hidden underneath a bridge along a hiking trail. The winner would be the first person or group to find the last clue. I always liked the idea of this game because it sounded like it would be fun, outside interacting with nature, playing a game, and using maps. Another type of map that involves a game is the maps used in videogames themselves. An example of this would be the overview map in a Call of Duty game. I personally play this game from time to time and use the map all the time to figure out where the opponents and my teammates are. Not only are maps used in games to educate and entertain, they are also used as the main focus of a game.

Recreation Mapping

When I read the idea for this blog a couple thoughts popped into my head, mainly focusing on biking. The first being that there are tons of maps online that show where there are recreation bike trails such as rails-to-trails programs like the one in Northampton, MA that is maintained by the Department of Conservation and Recreation. This trail section stretches from Northampton, through Hadley and Amherst, and finally ending in Beltchertown. DCR also provides maps for hiking and places such like public boat launches. While these maps are created by professionals, there are other maps that I use that are created by enthusiasts mapping their trails. An example of this is on Bachelor Street in Granby, MA. There is a map produced by DCR for this state owned forest that is part of the Holyoke Range, but it does not show the vast system of mountain bike trails that were created by these enthusiast. What they have done is take the DCR map and used it as a base layer and then added on the missing trails along with the names and difficulty rating for each. The only problem is that this map is not available online to show as an example. But, tons of examples of mapping recreation can be found by going to the D DCR website by clicking here.

Granvilles

The three different communities of Granville MA, Granville OH, and Granville IA have the same name but are completely different not only in spatial features, but, in they way they were planned as well. Take Granville MA for example:

As you can see on the map, this peticular Granville is very rural with only 1,521 residents according to the US Census. These residents live within the 42.24 square miles of land that lie within the borders.

Granville OH, a township in Licking County OH, is completey different from the rural town of Granville MA. The 2000 census has the township having 8,994 residents on in only 26.04 square miles. This is much more city like due to its proximity to the city of Columbus.

The last Granville is in the state of Iowa. This town has a miniscule population of 325 residents at the time of the 2000 census. I was curious to see what a town of 325 people would look like and the map answered my questions about this Granville. With only 0.29 square miles, the town is surrounded by farms for as far as a person could see. Surrounding these agricultural fields that are other small towns of the same size.

After looking over three different towns by the same name, it becomes apparent why defining which town is being talked about is absolutely essential to specify which state is being talked about. Also, just talking about these towns does not do them justice to see how different they actually are from one another. Two towns could be identical in population and square miles of land but have compeltely different master plans that are responsible for how the towns look today.

Blog Bucket: Maps As Art

For this first blog bucket I picked mapping as an art. When I went looking for this online there were several different types of examples that were readily available. These were things such as turning maps themselves into pieces of art, I also think that old, hand drawn maps are works of art in themselves, and the most interesting one I found was tattoos of maps. Since I think tattoos are an art form in themselves then to add the art of maps into it is really interesting. The two pictures are great examples of this. One is actually the a map of the Chicago Transit Authority's elevated system. The one at the top of the post is more like a traditional hand drawn map from well before the 1800s. I just thought this was really cool and have never seen/heard of people doing this before.

Historic South Hadley

After digitizing all of the old railroad maps for a couple of the past classes, it got me curious about the historic maps I could find on my town. I had seen maps from the mid to late 1800s but I was interested in something even older. It took me a little while but the only place with really old maps came from another blog called Exploring Western Massachusetts . This blogger has posted tons of maps from all over western mass and there were several from South Hadley. This map to the left shows a street in my town that is still in use today and has even become a major route, (RT. 116). There was also another map of the falls, where there were mills along the canal just like across the river in the more famous city of Holyoke. Although the South Hadley Falls map was difficult to read and even worse when zoomed in, the rt. 116 map was a little easier to read and it was cool to see who owned which plot of land and what stores were there and how they relate to now.

3D Maps and ESRI Case Studies

When I took the virtual tour and watched the videos on the Placeways website I was very impressed with the technology and software they have created to incorporate 3D maps into GIS. ESRI already had forms of three dimensional maps in their software but nothing of this caliber. The ability to have geographic data in 3D images similar to that available in 2D maps is great.

When I was exploring the ESRI website and their case studies, one that sparked my interest was an article about sustainable development and GIS called "Formulating A Sustainable Development Land Use Scenario Using GIS." This article explained how by using ArcGIS, they were able to estimate what the land use for Hervey Bay would be in the year 2021. In the article they had two maps, each showing what the bay area would look like if there were no sustainable development tools used and what it would look like if they were implemented.

This map shows Hervey Bay without sustainable tools:


This one depicts the area if sustainable development tools were used:


The ability to predict what an area will look like in the future based on different development tools will allow a city planner or regional planner to make more informed decisions about what would be best for the community based on the master plan.

Social Explorer Review

After playing with the social explorer website for a good amount of time, I found that the free version does not offer a wide range of available information. If the map creator just needs a simple map on population or religion, the free version is perfect for this. For example, I thought I would look at the race in my area in the 1790s census tract as compared to the 2000 census tract. The results were not very surprising based on the history of my surrounding towns.

1790 Census Tract
2000 Census Tract

Taking into consideration that this is only a trial version and the purpose is to get consumers to purchase the full version, it may be able to help some people create simple maps. I personally would much rather just use ArcMap to create maps since I have spent several semesters using the software and am very comfortable with the procedures.

Mapping Music

I decided that the easiest way to find anything on mapping music would be to go to google and type in “map music.” The search came up with many results and a couple were surprisingly relevant. One site, which can be found here, was the best site I initially found. It allowed the user to click on any state in the United States or other countries in the world. Once selected on a state, Massachusetts for example, and it gave me the top ten artists for the state, along with the current top ten albums. I clicked on a good amount of states in the United States and found it surprising that The Beatles were on the top ten artists in each one. This sparked my interest and I continued to click on other countries and found that The Beatles were listed in many other countries, even outside of North America. I also noticed that when The Beatles were not listed, there was most likely another band that originated in the United States such as Lady GaGa and Michael Jackson. This map allows people to see how globilzation is affecting the music industry. It surprised me to find that Taylor Swift and Michael Jackson were among the current top ten artists in India, and Beyonce, Linkin Park, Britney Spears, and Black Eyed Peas being top ten in Kazakhstan.