Nice consise history of mapping from his lecture "The Ubiquitous Digital Map" by Gary Gale, Director of Global Ccommunity Programs, HERE.
http://www.vicchi.org/2013/02/19/the-ubiquitous-digital-map-abridged/
Great retrospective on 100 years of National Geographic map making.
100 Years of National Geographic Maps: The Art and Science of Where
Since 1915, National Geographic cartographers have charted earth, seas, and skies in maps capable of evoking dreams.
This beaut on the right is from 1968 of the ocean floor. The article says: " Based on the work of geophysicists Bruce Heezen and Marie Tharp, this 1968 map of the ocean floor helped bring the concept of plate tectonics to a wide audience. Tharp began plotting the depths in 1950 from soundings taken by ships in the Atlantic, but, as a woman, wasn't allowed on the ships herself. In 1978 she was awarded the Society's Hubbard Medal for her pioneering research."
/span>/span>As part of the massive ongoing effort to map Sonoma County with high-res imagery and lidar, historic imagery of the county was collected and georeferenced. The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District funded SFEI to mosaic 72 historic aerials taken over Sonoma County by the Department of Defense in 1942. Mark Tukman put together this web service with a image swiping tool showing the combination of the 2011 imagery service and the mosaiced historic imagery.
Sonomaopenspace.maps.arcgis.com
About the historic imagery: In 1942, the Department of War collected air photos in anticipation of a possible strike. These photos are the earliest complete image set for Sonoma County and give us an unprecedented look at Sonoma County's agriculture and open space prior to the post World War II baby boom.
These images are snaps from the service, both from an area outside Rohnert Park in Sonoma County: on the bottom is the image from 1942, on the top is the area in 2011 showing considerable development.
/span>Take a look at this awesome VTM reshoot from the folks over at Geographic Resource Solutions (GRS), photographed during a recent mapping project of Lassen Volcanic National Park. Yet another great example and an incredible testament to lasting power of the VTM dataset. This particular photo was taken near the Chaos Crags Jumble in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Thanks to Ken Stumpf and GRS for sharing!
In a similar vein I recently stumbled upon another meshing of historical and contemporary photographs. The project features reshoots of the Grand Canyon and resulted in a 2012 book titled: Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe
Published by University of California Press. You can see a few of the photographer’s recent projects on their website. Historical photos are just the best!
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We have been talking recently with the HOLOS project and the IGIS InfoBase project about the need to "rescue" data and to provide frameworks for data synthesis. I present to you a profound example of these needs: the VTM project. We are nearing launch of the new VTM website, in which the maps, plots, and photograph portions of the VTM collection are united and powered by HOLOS, open data, and sharing. The journey from paper collection to digital data has been a long one, with several cases of almost accidental and purposeful destruction. As such it is a cautionary tale about the importance of rescued and shared historical data in ecological and geographical analysis.
I spent this evening reading the oral history conducted in 1985 by Ann Lange of Albert Wieslander. It is called: California Forester: Mapper of Wildland Vegetation and Soils A. E. Wieslander, and it is a fascinating read. In addition to being a real spitfire and having very clear opinions on things (and people), he also tells this tale about the near loss in 1952 of the vegetation maps. Wieslander had made 23 of his vegetation maps available for publication through the University Press, for production and sale at a cost of $1 each. This was meant to supply funds for the rest of the maps to be published. But that didn't work out as planned.
"Not very many of the maps were sold, even though articles were written to give them publicity. I realized fairly soon that we wouldn't be able to publish any more unless we got additional money someplace.” He was "casually told one day that the University Press had written a letter to the station saying that the maps weren't selling very well, and it wanted to return the quadrangles to the station. They didn't want to handle it anymore.” A forest service employee "told the University Press the station didn't want the maps back and authorized it to dump them. I didn't know anything about this until after it was done. There was nothing I could do about it then. Imagine all these beautiful maps. They didn't even take out one as a sample.”
What!! That is so shortsighted… Anyway read on…
Wies (he refers to himself "Wies" in the interviews) then found out that the University Press couldn't understand the dumping of all those maps and alerted Paul Zinke, Forestry Professor here at Berkeley.
"So Zinke went down and got twenty copies of each of the quadrangles.”
“But, we still had all the original field maps, kept at the experiment station. Just before I retired, I talked with Herbert Mason about all the printed maps having been destroyed and about how it was important to preserve the originals. Researchers could use them. He suggested that the Botany Department set up in the Life Sciences Building a plant geography room. And the main feature of this plant geography room would be the vegetation mapping project. So I moved all the files of maps and sample plots over to the Life Sciences Building. Mason went through the material and found at least a third, maybe more, of the original maps were gone.” Apparently, different national forests had been writing to the station requesting certain maps. Since they didn't have any of the printed maps, originals were sent out, with no record kept of what was sent, or to whom.
This explains why the maps have been scattered across the state, and why it has taken so long to pull them (mostly) together again.
"Anyway, I'm glad that was done. It was a very nice publication, and it gave proper credit to the draftsman who did the beautiful job of drafting, and to the project, and to me. Then Critchfield also worked with James Griffen, of the university, and got out another publication on "The Distribution of Trees in California." It was based on the maps and other data we had." When Wies expressed "concern about these maps and Dr. Critchfield said, "I would like to get them deposited in the Bancroft Library." I don't know whether he did it or not, but that's what he told me.”
Thank goodness that they are back on campus in the Marian Koshland Library, and the whole collection (albeit without the herbarium specimens) will be re-united and available for use.
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