Inspiring Maps from NACIS 2024

Oct 22, 2024

The 2024 edition of the North American Cartographic Information Society annual meeting wrapped last week, and as you might expect, there were a lot of great maps, of all different kinds. Interactive and static. Historic and modern. Minimalist and flashy. Here’s a selection of a few that inspired me.

1923 map of the Channeled Scablands in Eastern Washington showing the prevailing northeast-to-southwest orientation of dozens of coulees. Light blue indicates the southern edge of the continental ice sheet, while dark blue with dots indiciates areas scoured free of soil. Dark blue with diagonal lines indicates areas covered with gravel. — 1923 map showing the Channeled Scablands—areas in Eastern Washington state either scoured of soil or covered in gravel. By J. H. Bretz & C. Bentley, via Nick Zentner.

Black and white map of Pennsylvania, showing Native American foot trails (dotted lines). Also included are rivers (black lines) modern and indigenous place names and the boundary of Pennsylvania (dashed line). — 1952 map of Historic Indian Paths of Pennsylvania. By Paul A. W. Wallace, via Cynthia Brewer.

Hand-drawn black and white maps of Guam showing the abundance of the Bridled White-eye (concentrated in a narrow band along the extreme north of the island) and the species’s essential habitat (the entire island). — Maps of Guam showing the distribution of the Bridled White-eye (now extinct on Guam) in 1978–79 (left), compared to its essential habitat (right). By the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, via Richard Bohannon.

Small multiple images of a map of the U.S. Mid-Atlantic coastline with styles that appear hand-drawn but were created in QGIS. — Assortment of styles that give a vintage, hand-drawn look to maps made in QGIS. By Andy Wodruff.

Linework style oblique map in color, highlighting the terrain, huts and campsites, and route. — Oblique map of mountains in New Zealand, with linework rendered by Blender’s Freestyle rendering engine. By Andrew Tyrell.

3D Map made from an oblique view of the North Face of Mount St. Helens. The upper slopes of the mountain are gray, still bare of vegetation, with a growing glacier surrounding the lava dome in the center of the summit crater. Green vegetation surrounds the mountain, even in the blast zone (at least at lower elevations). — A bird’s-eye view of Mount St. Helens, showing the landscape as it recovers from the 1980 eruption. By Dan Coe.

3D map of the buildings that make up the Kennecott Mines mill town. These buildings are arrayed along the bottom of a steep, forested slope. — 3D map of the Kennecott Mine mill town in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska. By Guthrie Alexander.

Maps showing morning illumination along the route through the Khumbu Icefall from Everest Basecamp to Camp 1. By Carl Churchill.

Gold foil highlights the unobscured face of the Sun across the U.S. during the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. By Kenneth Field.

Purple, dark blue, green, and yellow colors represent CO₂ removed per unit of alkalinity added to the ocean. Higher values (yellow) indicate more efficient carbon removal. — Interactive map of dissolved efficiency of ocean alkalinity enhancement in the global ocean. By Shane Loeffler, Kata Martin, and Carbon Plan.

Interactive map of the demogaphics of New York in 1880. By Kelsey Taylor, Eric Brelsford, and Stamen Design.

Still from an interactive animation of precipitation intensity from Hurricane Milton. Light rain is blue, moderate rain is orange, and heavy rain is red. This frame shows the center of the storm near Tampa Bay, Florida. — Radar map (with an elegant color palette) of precipitation intensity as Hurricane Milton crossed Florida. By William B. Davis and the NY Times Weather Data Team.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to look closely at the NACIS map gallery, and my brain was mostly melted during the late afternoon sessions. I’m sure I missed many more great maps on display. Fortunately, talks will be posted on the NACIS YouTube channel soon, so we’ll all get the chance to see them!

(My own Practical Cartography Day talk was on Mapping with Satellite Data (Beyond Landsat and Sentinel-2), which was a condensed version of A Gentle Introduction to GDAL Part 8: Reading Scientific Data Formats.)

Inspiring Maps from NACIS 2024

Written by Robert Simmon

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