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Seeing is Complicated...

...and seeing and thinking and understanding is a big part of maps and GIS.

1. Traditional Cartographic Design & Map Production

• Chippewa Moraine map
  

• Flight of Voyager map
  

  • handout copies of map

  • What do you need to know to make this map?

    
    
    
    
    

  • PDF: Making Maps 2nd edition, Ch 1 (How to Make a Map) pp. 4-7.

    
    
    
    
    

2. Post-1980 Developments in Cartography and Visualization

Animation: show changing data (of changing phenomena) with a changing / dynamic presentation

• Animated maps: earliest in films around World War 2

• Computer animated maps: late 1960s

• Current status: inexpensive and easy to use software for animation

  
  

• Screen Shot: The Spread of AIDS in Pennsylvania: Macromedia Director (ca 1982)

  

  
  
  

  Animated GIFs (mid 1980s):

  Examples: Plate Tectonics (gif)

  
  Animation in Google Earth | KML or KMZ files (2007)

  Example: Animated Maps in Google Earth (demo)
  
  
  

  Animation with Flash, Python, Java

  Example: Mapping Walmarts with Modest Maps (library of code for Flash & Python)

  
  

  Dynamic phenomena (changes, moves over time) matched to dynamic presentation (animation)

Interactivity: user can engage with and change the map

• With paper maps you can mentally interact, but not physically interact with a map

• Interactive maps developed as computer mapping developed (1960s onward)

  
  

• Screen Shot: SLC Viewer: Global Climate Model Visualization: UNIX software (ca 1985)

  

• dots: ocean temperature; grey: atmospheric CO2; blue lines: salinity

• Climate scientists develop computer simulations; simulate past climates in attempt to understand current and future climates

• 30-40 different variables: temperature, ocean salinity, ocean currents, etc.)

• SLC Viewer: select and view any 1, 2, or 3 variables together

• Shockwave Examples: North America History Maps

• Flash Example: Flash Earth

• Flash Example: Ohio is a Piano

• Flash Example: Manhattan Timeformations

  
  

• Interactivity: unlike paper maps, the user can change and manipulate interactive maps.

Multimedia/Hypermedia: Combine and link maps with images, graphs, video, and other media

• Atlases are akin to multimedia: maps with text, images, graphs, etc.

• digital multimedia and hypermedia: digitally connected text, images, graphics, video, sound

• Development of multimedia/hypermedia software in the 1970s onward, boom with the internet & WWW

  
  

• Screen Shots: HyperQuehanna: interactively understanding landscape change (social, historical, human) over time: Macromedia Director (ca 1988)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  
  

• Example: Newspaper Map (Flash)

• integrate maps, text, images, animations, etc. w/interactivity

Geographic Information Systems: GIS

• Not just making maps, but all the steps from collecting, processing and getting data prepared, to analysis and interaction with the data (the latter in map form), to a final map.

• Initially developed in the 1970s and 80s.

• GIS has layers of digital maps, linked to databases
  

  Basic GIS analysis: queries, buffers, finding what is near or inside, finding shortest routes between two points, etc.

  
  

  Geography 355: Delaware Bike Trails Project

  

  Demo: Delaware County GIS (ArcIMS)

  GIS includes a broad range of software functions, in which maps play a central role, with an ever-increasing array of applications and broadening user base.

• Mashup: putting different stuff together.
  • Music mashups splice and overlay segments of different songs that, in combination, become a new song.

  • Map mashups combining geographic data and maps from multiple sources into a new map.

• Map Mashups require an API (Application programming interface): a bunch of programming tools for building new applications.
  • More on APIs:
    • Web Mashup APIs
    • Programmable Web APIs
    • Programmable Web Map Mashups

• Google Maps API allows anyone to combine their data with Google Maps as the background. Requires signing up for a free API key which allows you to create mashups with Google Maps, and some HTML scripting). It also requires that you have geographic data, points, lines, and areas, in latitude/longitude, and specify these locations in the HTML code. The benefit is that anyone anywhere with web access can see your data mapped out with a Google Maps background.

• Map Mashup Example: The Geography of Geography 222 Spring 2009

• Google's My Maps allows you to place points, lines, and areas directly on a Google Map background, and annotate these features with text, images, and movies. Nerd note: since you are not combining Google Maps with another digital data set, My Maps is not technically a mashup; maybe it is a mashup between your brain and Google Maps.

• Google Maps

• Google Map Sightseeing

• Google Maps Mania

• Census.gov

• Demo: WW2 in the Pacific (Flash)

• Demo: Iraq Casualties (Flash)

• Google Earth and Map Mashups...

• ease of access; more people than ever have access to mapping and GIS tools

Technological changes in mapping over the last 30 years more profound and fast than in any other era in history.

Map concepts and map design: have not changed nearly as much but need to be adapted to new technologies

This course: bring together more traditional cartography and cartographic design with new technologies and new kinds of maps

• WWW mapping and GIS: everyone is a cartographer!

• everyone has to know the basics of making maps in this new context

Some general goals for this course:

Learn the logic and guidelines for making maps with computers

• issues which transcend any particular software package

• long history of 'map design': Making Maps as a concise overview of map design issues

Learn how a map is constructed from beginning to end:

• defining the project: Why are you making your map? Who is it for?

• seeking appropriate data

• cleaning up and reformatting data so it can be mapped (spreadsheet)

• seeking appropriate digital base maps (ArcGIS)

• linking data to base maps with GIS (ArcGIS)

• classifying data, symbolizing data in map form (ArcGIS)

• exporting maps (ArcGIS, PhotoShop)

• animating maps (GIF Animation)

• presenting animated maps on the WWW (HTML & KMZ/KML/Google Earth)

• evaluating and documenting your work throughout

Familiarize yourself with basic computer skills: working with Windows, file management, graphic files, image processing software, HTML, WWW searching, GIS software, Animation software, text processing, etc.

The Course in General

• Relation to Geography 222: The Power of Maps and GIS

• Course WWW Site

Your Instructor

• Instructor WWW Site

Introduction to and Overview of Lab Project

• Lab project: your entire grade! (individual parts of project + evaluations)

• Multiple steps building up to a major project (vs. exercises)

• Missing classes, particularly when lab exercises are explained: don't do it

• Falling behind: fatal (loose points, difficult to catch up)

  
  

• Lab Computer Skills Required: on syllabus

• Project can be expanded and developed by students with more skills

• Grade based on how well your project reflects your abilities

• Grade based on creativity

Basic Project: Visualizing Population Change, 1900 to 2010

Goal: to produce a series of animated, interactive maps, for display on the WWW, which serve as a means of visualizing county level population change over time.

• akin to a 'real world' project

I. Define the Geographic Context and Mapping Method

• Topic of US population change
  • Each student will chose a different state or group of states to focus on.

  • Smaller states: do several (problems w/ Alaska, Hawaii)

  • Gather additional information (historical, contemporary) about your state; helps to interpret the patterns you see in animation

• Next time: Decide on your State(s)

• Possible to do a different country (but has been difficult to find data): talk to instructor

• Familiarize yourself with the data: U.S. Census (via the WWW).

II. Locating, Downloading, and Processing Course Data

• Locate and Obtain US State Population Data 1900-2010

• In the real world: data not just given to you that is ready to use

• Potential problems and hassles: good!

• Processing the Data: editing, cleaning up, etc. w/ Excel Spreadsheet

III. Mapping the Data

• Create "choropleth" maps of the data: ArcGIS
  • link processed data to maps

  • calculate % change; classify data and design maps

  • document and evaluate

  • additional map types created from same data

• Result: series of different maps in ArcGIS

IV. Animating the Series of Maps

• Using software to animate the series of maps

• Animation on the WWW: GIF file animation

• Animation in Google Earth: KMZ/KML file creation

V. Placing your materials on the WWW

• By the end of the quarter you will have, on the WWW
  • animated population change maps: Animated GIFs and KMZ files

  • but also additional info about your project and links to additional info.

• WWW origins: sharing information among Scientists
  • continue that tradition: share your work with rest of world (and mom and pop and granny and gramps)

  • if your project stinks, everyone will know.

  • learn HTML in the process: anyone know HTML?

• End of semester: present work in class

III. Some Final Comments...and things to start doing

• Attempt to have fun with the project and in the class
  • encourage creativity, moving beyond the basic project

  • use myself and other students as resources

  
  

• Course evolving: Making Maps book and course revisions and changes in technology

  
  

• Technology = crisis: crashes, buggy software, lost files
  • A learning process as much about computers as about mapping and GIS

  • Document problems and triumphs

  • You are responsible for backing up your work (flash drive, CD)

  • Positive outcome: increased comfort with computers and their quirks

    
    

OWU Computer Cartography and GIS Lab

• regular hours: 7am-7pm M-F

• other hours: get code from instructor & use OWU card to get in building (doors on lower west side of building)

Basic rules and regulations in the Lab

• the Lab is for students enrolled in Geology/Geography courses and Geology/Geography/ES majors

• The Lab is for Mapping and GIS projects and other Geology/Geography projects

• The Lab has no full time attendant or technical staff

• Don't modify, add, or remove software: ask if you have software questions

• Projects will be discarded at end of semester (back up your work)

• Let me know, and place a note on the computer, if you notice a problem

• Food and drink policy: don't make a mess

• Relatively open and unrestrictive: don't do things which make me impose strict rules

Next meeting: initial lecture, contextualizing this course

• Choose a state(s) you are interested in and why

• Personal introductions

• Get used to using the WWW site! Go there and print out Syllabus and the Course Schedule

• Send me an email (jbkrygier@owu.edu) from your OWU Email account (which I prefer), and include the following information:
  • Your Name (preferred name)

  • This course (Geography 353)

  • Major (if known)

  • Year at OWU

  • Hometown (and state or country)

  • Computer Experience

  • Other geography courses you have taken (name or number)

  • Other geography courses you have this semester (name or number)

  • Reason for taking this course

E-mail: jbkrygier@owu.edu

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