Cartographic Animations

Ia Drang and Landing Zone X-Ray

Cartographic animations are a dynamic visual representation of a geographic area over time. The one that I chose for this post is a flash animated battle map of Landing Zone X-ray during one of the first battles of the Vietnam War between the 7^th Air Cavalry and the People's Army of Vietnam. The battle spanned a time period of 48 hrs. To view the animation you will need to click on the URL above, and then click on the individual maps labeled LZ X-ray Map1, 2, and 3.

Statistical Map

www.sissa.it/he/statistical/links.html

A statistical map demonstrates how a particular variable is distributed throughout a geographic area. This map happens to be a statistical map of my ancestral country; Italy. This is a copy of an interactive map that when clicked on demonstrates statistical groups and institutions within Italy.

Cartogram

amphibiaweb.org/amphibian/cartograms/

A cartogram is another type of thematic map that distorts area for the purpose of demonstrating an attribute or feature. This map deals with amphibian diversity by Country; I chose it for its soothing shades of green.

Flow Map

www.iaspei.org/brochure/brochure.html

A Flow Map shows the direction of movement or the sequencing and ordering of information. Flow diagrams can also be used to show cause and affect relationships. Since global warming seems to be on everyone’s mind I chose the map above which shows global heat flow and was compiled from data by the International Heat Flow Commission.

Isoline Map

www.esri.com/news/arcwatch/0207/feature.html

An Isoline map is a variation of a thematic map because like a thematic map it shows data of a specific subject for a specific purpose. Information is related through the use of lines that connect points of equal value. The map above demonstrates the amount of rainfall—from 250 mm annually to 11,000 mm annually that falls on the island of Maui, Hawaii; a place that I would not mind visiting.

KML File - Week 7 assignment

http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/remote-sensing/advancedmethods/DRTO/drto_bathy_index.kmz
This KLM file on Google Earth is of the Dry Tortugas National Park (DRTO) in the Florida Keys. When you run the file you will see that this place is anything but dry. There are approximately 79 interactive location pins in this file. The pins represent submerged Topography data with a DEM image. The data pins are organized to make up a grid of 2 km x 2 km tiles. There is also an elevation color bar at each location which demonstrates both surface topography, and submerged topography.
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/remote-sensing/advancedmethods/googleearth.html

Proportional Circle Map

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/slothblog/2006/
Above is an extreme example of a proportional circle map; this is also an example of a cartogram. This map is demonstrating the Red-Blue political divide in the US. It is broken down county by county and it is area proportional. The color demonstrates how the counties voted for either party (red/Republican, blue/Democrat) during the 2000 Presidential election. The intensity of the color signifies the degree to which the counties voted Democrat or Republican.