Mapping Nevada

There are many ways to look at Nevada and maps are the best way to do it. You can show earthquake hazards, recreation areas, roads and streets, road conditions, and any number of other things important to Nevada.

http://www.mapofnevada.net/ - This site has an interactive map of Nevada showing things to do and places to go.

http://energy.state.nv.us/renewable/wind.htm
This site has a wind map showing places that would be good sites for a wind farm for generating power.

virtual worlds

ArcGIS Explorer looks like it would be a very powerfull program for those in the GIS industry but there is no free version and from reading the website, it is currently only availabe to current customers of ESRI products.
Celestia is different in that it allows you to explore worlds other that our own. Like Jupiter for example:



It also shows how things are in real time so you see the current day/night terminator line. You can also track satillites such as the ISS:



You can't zoom very far in before you lose any kind of usable image though. This service is a fun way to learn about the solar system interactively but that seems to be about the only practicle use.

Spatial Games

Lets face it, games are fun. Everyone likes to play games of some sort be it sports or board games or card games or what ever kind of games you're into. Some games are solely meant for amusement, others can be educational, others can be physical or some combination of all three. What is another thing most people like to play with? Technology of course! People like to fidle with things, take things apart just to put them back together and see if it will still work. One type of game that encompasses all of these things is Geo poker. Old fashion card game gone tech! You dwonload a list of GPS points to find containers, sometimes physical, sometimes virtual, to get a code. You enter the code on the website and get a card, once you get a full hand, it's just old fashion poker. This game is just fun because poker is a fun card game, educational because it get people hands on experience with GPS and finding points, it can be physical because you have to get outside to find the physical containers and it's using GPS technology.

mapping technology

Mapping technology. What does it mean? Does it mean the technology used to create maps or is it making maps of technology? I'll cover all the bases and and discuss both topics.
The technology that is used to make maps has made map making much easier. Early maps had to be hand drawn making them hard to reproduce so the only people with maps were those with the money to pay people to draw them or the need for maps to navigate by. The invention of the printing press made the reproduction of maps possible so they became more available to the general public. Maps may have been reproducable but they're accuracy still depended on the people making the observations and measurements. With space technologies taking off, sattilites were able to take detailed photographs of large area of the planet that could be used for map making but a reference system was still needed. The launch of a constilation of satilites enabled a grid to be placed over the Earth that satilites could use to return a set of possition coordinates in a number of refrence systems like UTM to a user on Earth via a GPS unit.

Making a map of technology could be just about anything since most things in life today show some level of technology. This is a map showing wireless network coverages for example

3D cartography

Computer technology has had a profound impact on the types of maps that can be created
and the methods used to create them. One example is the use of three dimensional technology to create a vitual landscape. In the past elevation had to be represented on a two dimensional plane by representing elevations with lines, or contours. Now with the use of GPS and GIS, Digital Elevation Models (DEM) can be created to represent the world in three dimensions. Google Earth, Windows Live, and World Wind all use three dimensional mapping to create maps that are fun to look at and play around with.

Old maps vs. New maps

Maps and the technology used to make them has changed drastically over the years. Old maps were hand drawn from data acquired by field notes and/or observations. These maps would be very simple in design yet take hours or days to create. Because they were hand drawn and took a lot of skill and talent to create, many old maps can be considered works of art. Gone are the days of maps taking a long time to create by a select few people. With satellite data, GPS, GIS, and any number of other computer based technologies, maps can now be created by just about anyone with a computer and internet access. Some would argue that because of the ability to mass produce maps, they are no longer and art form. I disagree. All that has changed is the medium of the artist and the skill he or she must posses in order to create maps that stand out from the everyday map.

interactive maps

The internet and computers in general are revolutionizing the way we use maps. Maps can be put together in a string and run together in an animation. Maps can be adjusted to show certain details or compare data on seperate maps on one map. web sites like mapquest and google maps allow you to create a map with only the information you want and the level of detail you need.

Mapping the news

Maps play an important role in telling stories. They help to clarely show where a particular story is taking place and illustrate spatial relationships between places regardless of weather they are fictional places or not. One example of the importance of maps to help tell a story is in the news. A traffic report would be too confusing to try and keep track of all the information if only read the report. With a map to go along with it, the viewer can visualize the information making it much easier to pick out the information that is important to him or her. For example, when presented with a textual list of information, it can be teadious to read through the entire report just to get a pice of information you are looking for:

 All routes are open with no controls with the following exceptions:

SR88:
- Snowtires or chains required for 19.4 miles between Hams Station
 California and Silver Lake California.
- Chains mandatory for 12.3 miles between Silver Lake California and
 6.7 miles west of Junction State Route 89 at Picketts Junction.

SR89:
- Road closed for 7.69 miles between 2.8 miles north of Junction US 50
 and Bliss State Park.

SR225:
- Snowtires or chains required for 73.14 miles between 0.03 miles
 north of Junction State Route 226 at Lone Mountain Station and Idaho
 State Line.

SR226:
- Snowtires or chains required for 17.4 miles between Junction State
 Route 225 and 0.6 miles south of Junction Tuscarora Road.
- Snowtires or chains required for 11.18 miles between 5.09 miles
 south of Junction Jack Creek Road and 3.65 miles north of Chicken
 Creek Summit.

SR228:
- Snowtires or chains required for 26.81 miles between Jiggs and
 Junction State Route 227.

SR229:
- Snowtires or chains required for 24.33 miles between 0.18 miles east
 of Lower Lamoille Road and 0.43 miles west of Junction State Route
 767.

SR722:
- Snowtires or chains required for 0.05 miles between West Junction US
 50 Near Eastgate and 0.05 miles east of West Junction US 50 Near
 Eastgate.

END

The same information as above plus additional information shown in a map below is much easier to get an idea of where and the road restrictions are at a glance:

Traffic isn't the only way news stories use maps though. Weather reports use maps to show where precipitation is falling or what direction a storm system is moving. Stories about events use maps to help clarify where the story is taking place. The news just wouldn't be as easy to understand with out the use of maps.

Maps that define America

Probably one the best and most notable attributes about this country is that we set aside areas that can not be developed and are protected from industries like timber and mining. There are numerous parks both at the state level and the federal level.

Fact or fiction

It's been said that cartography is the last honest science. The last profession that people trust without a second thought. Maybe this shouldn't be the case though. People have been lying with maps for as long as people have been making and reading them. The only difference between cartographers and other people is that cartographers are better at lying in a believable way. They will skew the data just a little to make something look a little more like what they want it to. The can adjust the map type so it doesn't quite tell what a casual reader thinks it is saying making them misinterpret the map. Politicians have the skill of "manipulating" the appearance maps down to a science to make them look more popular than they are.
At a quick glance, the 2000 presidential election looks like a runaway for Bush since there is a lot more red than blue but add up the small numbers in parenthesis and it wasn't a runaway at all!

The good, the bad, and the ugly maps

Poor color usage in a map

This map of California Indian Tribal Groups has too many instances of colors being repeated but having no direct relation to each other. Blue is used to represent water but there are certain tribal groups also represented colors close to blue that can cause distraction or confusion. This map could be cleaned up by changing hue and values to create a nearly infinite choice of colors making repetition unnecessary.

Good color usage in a map

This map has a good use of color. Blue is used to indicate bodies of water and nothing else. Green indicates national parks. California is a much darker color than the background areas giving it a good figure-ground relationship. The red used to show major freeways/highways still stands out from the main figure of California enough to be easily distinguishable.