Flightradar24’s Map of GPS Interference
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
3d ago
Another map of GPS interference, also based on GPS accuracy information reported by aircraft, this one from Flightradar24. Data updates every six hours. And once again high levels of interference are being reported from conflict zones: Ukraine and other foci of Russian mischief like the Baltics, plus Israel/Palestine, though to be honest I didn’t expect Myanmar. Data is archived, so you can look up previous dates (7 days free, more than that needs a site subscription). [Maps Mania] Previously: GPSJam Maps GPS Interference ..read more
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Cloud Cover Risk During the 2024 Solar Eclipse
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
3d ago
Eclipses aren’t any fun if you travel to go see one and it’s cloudy. I’ve been debating with myself what to do about next month’s total solar eclipse: the path of totality is a couple hours’ drive away and therefore manageable, but from what I’ve gathered the odds of clear skies aren’t great. These odds are based not on weather forecasts—still too early for that—but on historical data. For example, NASA Earth Observatory’s map, above, shows the average of the past 20 years of cloud cover across North America’s eclipse track on the day of the eclipse (April 8). Want more detail? Like, a lot mo ..read more
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The ‘River Sins’ of Fantasy Maps
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
2w ago
Author K. M. Alexander has some thoughts about rivers on fantasy maps, and the mistakes authors make with rivers when drawing those maps. When it comes to rivers, I’ve noticed that quite a few fantasy writers don’t understand the basics. While their intent is noble, I’ve seen plenty of examples of authors struggling with the underlying science of rivers and river systems. I sympathize. These are mistakes I have made myself. Early on, in one of my first projects, I made a mess with the waterways in my fantasy world. Mistakes like these—I like to jokingly call them “river sins”—might go unnotic ..read more
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All Mapped Out
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
2w ago
Cultural geographer Mike Duggan’s 2017 Ph.D. thesis was an ethnographic study of digital mapping practices in everyday life. His new book, All Mapped Out (Reaktion, 1 Feb 20241) “is an exploration of how maps impact our lives on social and cultural levels.” He explains a bit about what this means in a recent article in The Conversation. Maps and what we do with them cannot be defined universally. Ideals and ideas about maps frequently clash with the reality of how and why maps are used. By bringing together my own research studying map users in London, and the work of others who have research ..read more
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One Map to Rule Them All: Fantasy Map Design Elements in ArcGIS Pro
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
John Nelson’s One Style to Rule Them All is an ArcGIS Pro map style that applies fantasy map design elements to real-world geographic data. It does something similar to his earlier (2018) map style, My Precious (described here) only differently and with fewer assets (and 1/60th the download size). John has examples and links to a four-part video tutorial at this ArcGIS Blog post. Previously: Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS ..read more
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Deep Learning Applied to Satellite Imagery Reveals Untracked Ships
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
Excerpt from Fig. 2 of Paolo et al., “Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea,” Nature 625 (2024). Speaking of AI-assisted global monitoring: researchers affiliated with Global Fishing Watch have revealed that the global fishing, transport and energy fleets are a lot bigger than expected. They were able to compare the locations of ships carrying AIS transponders with satellite imagery, to which deep learning was applied to classify ships. They conclude that something like three-quarters of industrial fishing vessels, and thirty percent of transport and energy vessels, go ..read more
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Google, EDF Partner to Build Map of Global Methane Emissions
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
Methane is a greenhouse gas, more powerful than CO2 but shorter-lived. Google is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund to map global methane emissions, much of which result from leaks from fossil fuel infrastructure and are undercounted. The EDF’s MethaneSAT satellite (itself a partnership between the EDF and New Zealand’s space agency) launches next month: it’ll measure methane emissions at high resolution. Google’s bringing to the party algorithms and AI, the latter to build a global map of oil and gas infrastructure. Once we have this complete infrastructure map, we can overlay th ..read more
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Heart-Shaped Maps
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
Today might be a good day to look at cordiform map projections—maps in the shape of a heart. This Geography Realm post (and related video) looks at the history of such projections, such as the Werner and Bonne, which first saw use in the 16th and 17th centuries. This Library of Congress blog post explores two maps that use the projection: a 1795 Ottoman Turkish map attributed to a Tunisian cartographer, and the 1534 map by Oronce Finé (pictured) that apparently inspired it ..read more
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Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
The 1995 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight was the first production car in North America to be offered with an on-board navigation system, Guidestar. Car enthusiast website The Truth About Cars recently ran a six-part series on the road to that release, exploring General Motors’ earlier, experimental attempts at in-car navigation. The series starts with the very experimental, 1960s-era DAIR, which would have relied on in-road magnets; parts two, three and four of the series look at TravTek, a system combining (still-scrambled-for-civilian-use) GPS with road sensors that was tested on Oldsmobile rental c ..read more
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Vector Tiles Are Coming to OpenStreetMap
The Map Room | A weblog about maps
by Jonathan Crowe
1M ago
On the OpenStreetMap blog, an announcement that vector tiles will be coming to OSM later this year. This is a significant, if belated technical change: other map platforms moved to vector mapping years ago (Google announced the change in 2013). But there are reasons for the delay: Vector tiles have become industry standard in interactive maps that, unlike openstreetmap.org, don’t get updated often, and where you can simply recalculate your whole database occasionally. But the map displayed on openstreetmap.org are quite uniquely different! They get updated incrementally and constantly, a minu ..read more
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