Thematic Maps

Thematic Mapping: 101 Inspiring Ways to Visualise Empirical Data explores the rich diversity of thematic mapping using a single dataset from the 2016 US presidential election.

This introductory textbook introduces students to the different types of map projections, map design, and map production.Cartography is generally a sophomore or junior level course for geography majors and many professors are beginning to introduce computer cartography throughout the course. A CD-ROM containing 120-day time-limited version of ArcView GIS, including text specific exercises, is packaged free with every text.

Maps are tools used to understand space, discover territories, communicate information, and explain the results of geographical analysis. This practical handbook is about thematic cartography. With more than 120 colorful amazing illustrations, numerous boxed texts, definitions, and helpful tools, this step-by-step introduction to cartography is both the art of understanding the world and a powerful tool for explaining it. Through many hands-on tests, the reader will learn how to produce an interesting and communicative map applied to any spatial theme. Written by experienced scholars and experts in cartography, this book is an excellent resource for undergraduate students and non-cartographers interested in designing, understanding, and interpreting maps. It includes practical exercises explained in the form of a game and provides a concise, accessible, and current address of cartographic principles, allowing readers to go deeper into cartographic design. It can be read from beginning to end like an essay or just by dipping into it for information as needed.

In Apocalyptic Cartography: Thematic Maps and the End of the World in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript, Chet Van Duzer and Ilya Dines analyse Huntington Library HM 83, an unstudied manuscript produced in Lübeck, Germany. The manuscript contains a rich collection of world maps produced by an anonymous but strikingly original cartographer. These include one of the earliest programs of thematic maps, and a remarkable series of maps that illustrate the transformations that the world was supposed to undergo during the Apocalypse. The authors supply detailed discussion of the maps and transcriptions and translations of the Latin texts that explain the maps. Copies of the maps in a fifteenth-century manuscript in Wolfenbüttel prove that this unusual work did circulate. A brief article about this book on the website of National Geographic can be found here.

“Thematic Cartography for the Society” is prepared on the basis of the best 30 papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Cartography and GIS held in Albena, Bulgaria in 2014. The aim of the conference is to register new knowledge and shape experiences about the latest achievements in cartography and GIS worldwide. At the same time, the focus is on the important European region - the Balkan Peninsula. The following topics are covered: User-friendly Internet and Web Cartography; User-oriented Map Design and Production; Context-oriented Cartographic Visualization; Map Interfaces for Volunteered Geographic Information; Sensing Technologies and their Integration with Maps; Cartography in Education. Focus on user-oriented cartographic approaches.

Geocomputation with R is for people who want to analyze, visualize and model geographic data with open source software. It is based on R, a statistical programming language that has powerful data processing, visualization, and geospatial capabilities. The book equips you with the knowledge and skills to tackle a wide range of issues manifested in geographic data, including those with scientific, societal, and environmental implications. This book will interest people from many backgrounds, especially Geographic Information Systems (GIS) users interested in applying their domain-specific knowledge in a powerful open source language for data science, and R users interested in extending their skills to handle spatial data. The book is divided into three parts: (I) Foundations, aimed at getting you up-to-speed with geographic data in R, (II) extensions, which covers advanced techniques, and (III) applications to real-world problems. The chapters cover progressively more advanced topics, with early chapters providing strong foundations on which the later chapters build. Part I describes the nature of spatial datasets in R and methods for manipulating them. It also covers geographic data import/export and transforming coordinate reference systems. Part II represents methods that build on these foundations. It covers advanced map making (including web mapping), "bridges" to GIS, sharing reproducible code, and how to do cross-validation in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Part III applies the knowledge gained to tackle real-world problems, including representing and modeling transport systems, finding optimal locations for stores or services, and ecological modeling. Exercises at the end of each chapter give you the skills needed to tackle a range of geospatial problems. Solutions for each chapter and supplementary materials providing extended examples are available at https://geocompr.github.io/geocompkg/articles/. Dr. Robin Lovelace is a University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds, where he has taught R for geographic research over many years, with a focus on transport systems. Dr. Jakub Nowosad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geoinformation at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, where his focus is on the analysis of large datasets to understand environmental processes. Dr. Jannes Muenchow is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the GIScience Department at the University of Jena, where he develops and teaches a range of geographic methods, with a focus on ecological modeling, statistical geocomputing, and predictive mapping. All three are active developers and work on a number of R packages, including stplanr, sabre, and RQGIS.

Festschrift honoring G.K. Dutt, b. 1929, geographer from India; comprises contributed articles in the Indian context.

“In his most ambitious work to date, [Edney] questions the very concept of ‘cartography’ to argue that this flawed ideal has hobbled the study of maps.” —Susan Schulten, author of A History of America in 100 Maps Over the past four decades, the volumes published in the landmark History of Cartography series have both chronicled and encouraged scholarship about maps and mapping practices across time and space. As the current director of the project that has produced these volumes, Matthew H. Edney has a unique vantage point for understanding what “cartography” has come to mean and include. In this book Edney disavows the term cartography, rejecting the notion that maps represent an undifferentiated category of objects for study. Rather than treating maps as a single, unified group, he argues, scholars need to take a processual approach that examines specific types of maps—sea charts versus thematic maps, for example—in the context of the unique circumstances of their production, circulation, and consumption. To illuminate this bold argument, Edney chronicles precisely how the ideal of cartography that has developed in the West since 1800 has gone astray. By exposing the flaws in this ideal, his book challenges everyone who studies maps and mapping practices to reexamine their approach to the topic. The study of cartography will never be the same. “[An] intellectually bracing and marvellously provocative account of how the mythical ideal of cartography developed over time and, in the process, distorted our understanding of maps.” —Times Higher Education “Cartography: The Ideal and Its History offers both a sharp critique of current practice and a call to reorient the field of map studies. A landmark contribution.” —Kären Wigen, coeditor of Time in Maps

"This introductory textbook introduces students to the different types of map projections, map design, and map production." -Amazon.com.

A thematic map is a map that illustrates more than simply geographical relationships or locations, but rather also portrays themes, patterns, or data relating to physical, social, medical, economic, political, or any other aspect of a region or location. Examples include maps that show variations of population density, climate data, wealth, voting intentions, or life expectancy with geographical location. These tools have become central to the work of scientists, practitioners, and students in nearly every field, from epidemiology to political science, and are familiar to members of the public as a common means of expressing complicated and multivariate information in easily understood graphical formats. This set of three volumes on Thematic Cartography considers maps as information constructs resulting from a number of successive information transformations and the products of decision stages, integrated into a logical reasoning and the order of those choices. It thereby provides a thorough understanding of the theoretical basis for thematic mapping, as well as the means of applying the various techniques and methodologies in order to create a desired analytical presentation. This first volume introduces the basics of thematic cartography. The authors present the transformations necessary to the production – using a scientific approach – of any thematic map. Four stages are detailed: from geographic entities to cartographic objects; the [XY] transformation; the [XYZ] cartographic transformations; and the semiotic transformation. Technical aspects giving map-reading keys are also included.