For Your Consideration: Parks & Visualization
One hundred years of visual history and graphic design in ‘Parks’
Welcome to Earth Week on Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society. In honor of Earth Day on April 22, we are publishing earth-related data-visualization content all week. Data viz can enhance our appreciation of the planet, illuminate our relationship to it, and call us to action to preserve it. After all, we only have one and it means the world to us. You can keep up with all of our Earth Week articles here.
For many Americans, national parks have served as a gateway to the natural world. For me, it was Big Bend—the jagged mountains and sweeping basins made me want to learn more about this rock we live on and how a seafloor becomes a campsite over millions of years. For others, maybe it was Yellowstone, our oldest national park, established in 1872.
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the legislation to establish Yellowstone “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” That phrase, which has been emblazoned on a plaque at the entrance to the park since 1903, reflects two sides of the parks’ purpose: to protect and conserve on the one hand, and to promote engagement and recreation on the other. It’s a bit ironic coming from a nation hellbent on westward expansion and taming the wilderness…
