Cartoko Blog

Country Studies / Area Handbook Series

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:32:31 +0000

Since the 1960s the Library of Congress, in partnership with the Department of Defense, has issued country studies (the Area Handbook Series) on lesser-known areas of the world, or areas where American troops might be deployed. About 500 maps from the 1960s to the 1990s have now been added to Cartoko, covering history, natural resources, climate, vegetation, industry, population, etc. The image in this post is a detail of a map showing Nicaragua’s insurgencies in the mid-1980s.

This Area Handbook Series is a fabulous resource for getting a solid background on an area, or for finding good, simple, copyright-free, and black-and-white maps (good for photocopying for all these reasons).

Have a country in mind? Cartoko’s list of all 2009 countries will quickly tell you if this series has covered that country, and where to find the maps.

The Land of Palms and Bananas

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:17:41 +0000

Anyone browsing through 19th and early 20th century world geographies has probably come upon some terms and map labels that give one pause. This vegetation map from a 1916 edition of Elements of Physical Geography is a case in point, where the world is divided into several “zones” from polar to tropical, the latter of which is also labeled as the zone of “Palms and Bananas.” While at first blush it might appear to be a ridiculously simplistic and even Eurocentric label, it in fact reflects progress in the rapidly developing field of vegetation classification during this period, using isotherms to create vegetation zones, and was a completely valid label in 1916.

Today, vastly improved knowledge of our environment enables vegetation maps to be far more sophisticated, but knowing how earlier generations saw the world goes a long way towards understanding why people did what they did, and is far more productive than judging past generations on modern precepts.

Cartoko on KML

admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:48:34 +0000

Having content is essential, but the ability to discover that content in the geoweb is just as critical. In addition to the textual searches on the site, and an increasing presence via search engines, we released this weekend the first KML interface for Cartoko. It provides basic background information on each country (plus many territories and islands) based on a small-scale boundary set updated through July 2009, with direct links to help you discover some excellent maps for each area on our site.

Note that since this is a world boundary set, the boundaries look decent down to around a scale of around 1:3,000,000 or so, but get choppy past that. Future implementations to include more detailed country boundaries and which will include more detailed information are in the works, with a more interactive Google Maps API development a little further down the road. In the meantime, feel free to utilize the KML provided.

Six Thousand and Counting

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:58:06 +0000

Six thousand maps is not a particularly large number. Wikipedia, for example, has quite a few more maps than that. The USGS has almost ten times that number in its 7.5′ topographic set alone. But that milestone was recently reached here at Cartoko after 7 active months of adding material (and describing it) in our spare time. Consider though that these six thousand maps constitute a mere beginning. A toehold on a mountain of maps yet to come.

The effort so far has been on the building of a core set of high-quality reference and thematic base maps to cover, at a basic level, the world at a global and national level. The United Nations recognizes 192 member states, and covering those, along with the oceans, seas, territories, as well as that little thing called Antarctica, takes some doing.

CURRENT STATUS AND NEXT STEPS
For logistical as well as copyright purposes, the national atlases of the United States and Canada have received special attention. These volumes contain a cornucopia of often highly-detailed maps portraying what was considered important aspects of the country at the time of publication. Likewise, the Country Studies published by the Library of Congress are also completely online, and feature many easy-to-read historical and thematic maps.

Besides continuing to add other new sources, the next push is to begin to systematically develop major sets of pages. Countries, world themes, and the like. This involves both ensuring that all relevant maps in the database are on the appropriate pages, and experimenting with new features and geoweb technologies to provide more useful results. Look for that to begin by late August.

United States County Population Density Maps, 2008 (by Mapkist)

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:47:36 +0000

Every Spring the U.S. Census Bureau rolls out its new county population estimates. These estimates are for July 1st of the preceding year. In the case of the data released in 2009, it means this is what the Census Bureau estimated the population of each county (or county equivalent) to be on July 1, 2008. Mapkist recently was generous enough to provide Cartoko with a set of custom-made maps based on this data.

Colorado Population Density 2008, by County

These maps are published under the Creative Commons license agreement. If you have maps you’d like to publish just register with Cartoko and add them! It’s easy and you can even choose your own license agreement. Creative Commons or Public Domain is recommended but not essential.

National Atlases

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 02:23:49 +0000

Relief Map of Canada

National atlases, regardless of origin, are often viewed as an opportunity for a country to show off – to establish itself as a country worthy of respect in both its own eyes and the eyes of the world.

The Statistical Atlas of the United States, published in 1874 after the 9th Census, was in some ways the first real national atlas of the United States. The U.S. national atlases will soon be completely available on the site. U.S. national atlas editions include the statistical atlases from the 9th Census (1870), 10th Census (1880), and 11th Census (1890), as well as the more well-known National Atlas of the United States, published in 1970. Right now the 1870 and 1880 atlases are almost completely loaded onto the site, with hundreds of maps from the web version of the U.S. National Atlas also available.

Canada published its first national atlas in 1906, with a second edition following shortly thereafter in 1915. The image to the left is a more recent map (1998), and includes the “proposed boundary of the new territory of Nunavut”, established on April 1, 1999. Canadian national atlas maps from the 1st (1906), 2nd (1915), 3rd (1957), 4th (1974), 5th (1978-1995), and web versions of the Canadian national atlas are now on Cartoko.

It’s about the maps you can’t see

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:52:29 +0000

This is a blog about the map wiki Cartoko. The blog’s main goal is to provide information on the latest major updates, feature enhancements, and milestones. Occasionally there might also be some commentary on related subjects in the world of online map repositories and indexes.

If anyone has any suggestions for the site, the blog, or comments on either, feel free to post them here or send to admin@cartoko.com, and I’ll try to respond as soon as possible. The next few posts will be some background on the site, some of the major collections already posted, the thoughts behind Cartoko, and the direction we’d like to see it grow.

For now, welcome to the blog and enjoy!

Craig Haggit