[Editor’s note: Two great maps from this month’s edition of National Geographic Magazine by Martin Gamache.]
Republished from National Geographic.
Click on each to view larger.
Posts Tagged ‘martin’
Maps of Mount Saint Helens, 30 years later +Tea Horse Road (NG)
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010Volunteered Geographic Information Workshop Notes
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010This conference, organized by the USGS, happened last month here in DC, thanks Martin! Special import for crises like Haiti.
Also check out: O’Reilly’s Rethinking Open Data: Lessons learned from the Open Data front lines. Read more »
Lots of online presentations and notes, some listed here:
- Morgan Bearden, U. S. Geological Survey – History of Volunteer Mapping at USGS
- Nama Budhathoki, University of Illinois – Volunteer mappers: Who are they and why do they map?
- Joel Cline, NOAA – Cooperative Observer Program
- Steve Coast, Open Street Map – Open Street Map
- Katie Filbert, Wikimedia Foundation – Wikimedia: volunteer-generated content
- Jeremy Irish, GeoCaching.com & Waymarking.com – Groundspeak: Lessons in Building Community
- Michal Migurski, Stamen Design – What and Why
- Greg Newman, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory – itSci.org: Citizen Science, Participatory GIS, and Community Based Monitoring
- Mike Thompson, Technigraphics Freedom Web – Freedom Web
- Andrew Turner, Fortiusone – Crowd-Sourced Official Data: Collection, Curation, Contribution between Volunteers and Government
- Helena Zinkham, Library of Congress – When Geo Info Isn’t the Goal: Flickr Pilot Project at the Library of Congress
The main site has full listing and notes from breakout sessions . . .
Who Supports Health Care Reform (NY Times)
Friday, January 29th, 2010[Editor’s note: Op-Art from the New York Times showing who (which states) supports and opposes health care reform grouped by age and income. Data from 2004, so not current but still informative. Thanks Martin!]
Republished from the New York Times. Nov. 18, 2009.
Gravity Wells (xkcd)
Thursday, January 14th, 2010[Editor’s note: Science comic geek alert. Thanks Martin and Jo!]
Republished from XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
App: iTopoMap for iPhone
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
[Editor’s note: Download free USGS topoquads and use the GPS and maps when you’re out hiking beyond cell reception and when Google Maps tiles don’t work (and don’t have good contour lines, creeks, or trails on them anyways). I’ve used the app and it works exactly as advertised. Thanks Martin!]
Republished in part from Martin’s posts at BackpackingLite.
Just downloaded and started using a new topo app for the iphone called iTopoMaps ($15) (web site). Looks like someone who backpacks and programs has gotten around to designing a topo map application. (There is another app called TopoPointUSA for $10 but I don’t like it as much.)
This app allows you to download and cache USGS topos on your phone freely downloadable through the phone in advance before your hike so that you can use the iPhone while in the wilderness, no need a 3G or cell phone signal. Turns the iPhone into probably the best mapping GPS with no fees to pay for maps.
I used this in Shenandoah today and it worked well. Still no route planning (track or GPX) functionality but apparently it’s coming. It does allow to create waypoints. This app may be what finally justifies my iPhone after 8 months of love/hate.
Feature list:
- Full 1:24k USGS Quads that can be locally cached on your iPhone
- Scrollable multi-zoom map interface (likeGoogleMaps!)
- Full 50 states
- Waypoints
- Goto Waypoint – distance and bearing
- Magnetic Declination Calculations
- GNIS Database for looking up features and identifiying them on the map!
I think the app hits the USGS google topo map server and downloads the image pyramids there. But they are free and will likely remain free.
You acquire the topos by tapping the screen while connected to the internet. So it does require a signal initially while planning and also requires some advance planning. But I cached all of Shenandoah yesterday before leaving my house while connected to broadband without any problem ( I have about 12Gb of free space on my phone so that helps). Those quads are now stored on my phone and since I visit Shenandoah very frequemtly they will stay on my phone for my next trips. No memory cards to fiddle with, no extra fee to pay to TOPO or Delorme or Garmin. FREE USGS topo Maps.
Ortelius, new Mac GIS software?
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Ortelius was demonstrated at the AAG conference in Las Vegas in mid March and looks promising. It’s billed as an affordable middle-way between Adobe Illustrator + MaPublisher and ArcGIS and it works on Macs, which ArcGIS does not. It’s a graphics design package that can import shapefiles and purports knowing object topology. It also has an integrated database so you can view and edit map object attributes. Map projections are supported and the package comes with pre-loaded map files to get you started.
Ortelius is currently under development and version 1.0 will be available in the first quarter of 2009. The intention is to release standard and “pro†versions with a starting price of $79. Thanks to Martin for this tip.
Data: ESA Global Land Cover Map Available Online (ESA)
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
[Editor’s note: Updated 300 meter resolution global landcover raster provides crisper, better validated snapshot. Available in GeoTIFF format as 1 file or regional (continental-level) compressed files. Thanks Martin!]
Republished from European Space Agency.Â
Original post date: 19 December 2008.
View legend. Image previews of the world map (hi-res jpg | tiff).Â
ESA’s global land cover map, which is ten times sharper than any previous global satellite map, is now available to the public online from the GlobCover website. It is the highest resolution land cover map that has been completely validated ever released.Â
Sixteen experts validated the map using more than 3,000 reference land cover points and showed it had an overall accuracy of 73% weighted by area for its 22 land cover classes. The map’s legend was developed using the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Land Cover Classification System (LCCS).Â
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| Â | GlobCover legend |
The map was generated using 19 months worth of data from Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument working in Full Resolution Mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m. Data were collected between December 2004 and June 2006.A consortium of specialists worked to process the map, including Medias France, Germany’s Brockmann Consult and Belgium’s Université catholique de Louvain.Â
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Global validation points
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These data are useful for many applications, including modelling climate change extent and impacts, conserving biodiversity and managing natural resources. The map has been downloaded by more than 4 000 people since October 2008.Â
The GlobCover project is part of ESA’s Earth Observation Data User Element (DUE). An international network of partners has worked with ESA on the project, including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), FAO, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Global Observations of Forest Cover and Global Observations of Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Implementation Team Project Office.
The GlobCover LC version 2 is available to public through the following ftp server:Â
ftp://uranus.esrin.esa.int/pub/globcover_v2/
On the FTP you will find:Â
1) The LandCover V2 in greyscale geotiffÂ
2) The QL – Quality file geotiffÂ
3) The legend in xls fileÂ
4) The latest Product Description Manual PDM_I2.1
The GlobCover Land Cover product is the highest resolution (300 meters) Global Land Cover product ever produced and independently validated. Â The GlobCover Land Cover product is based on ENVISAT MERIS data at full resolution from December 2004 to June 2006. Â The GlobCover Land Cover product has been developed in partnership with EEA, FAO, GOFC-GOLD, IGBP, JRC and UNEP. Â The GlobCover Land Cover product is labelled according to the UN Land Cover Classification System.
When using the GlobCover Land Cover product acknowledgment shall be as follow:Â
Source data: © ESA / ESA GlobCover Project, led by MEDIAS-FranceÂ
Image: © ESA / ESA GlobCover Project, led by MEDIAS-France
China Pictures 1st (Kelso)
Thursday, November 6th, 2008I vacationed in China for 12 days at the end of October 2008 and returned just in time to participate in Obama’s smashing victory over McCain in the US presidential contest.
Here is a quick selection of my photos from Shanghai, West Lake / Huang Zhou, Jing de Zhen, Huang Shan / Yellow Mountains, and Beijing / Great Wall. I’ll be posting more later with some trip discussion and photo captions.
To see the photos blown up, click on the photo thumbnail below, and then click on the next page’s thumbnail to see the larger resolution image. Sorry, WordPress is lame about this.
