The selection process for map projections is a mystery to many mapmakers and GIS users. Map projections ought to be selected based on the map’s geographic extent and the required distortion properties, with the goal of minimizing the distortion of the mapped area. Despite some available selection guidelines, the selection...
Illuminated contour lines, where line width and color are varied based on an angle of illumination, date back to the mid-nineteenth century, but their effectiveness compared to conventional contour lines has not been fully examined. Currently, illuminated contour lines are not widely used in computer-based cartography because they are not...
Volcanic hazard maps inform the public on the nature and extent of the hazards that threaten them, but these maps are often challenging for those who are not trained in map use or geology. The maps in this study focus on lahars, a dangerous, fast, and far-reaching volcanic hazard that...
Natural ground color is useful for reference maps as well as maps where a realistic representation of the Earth's surface matters. Natural color schemes are less likely to be misinterpreted, as opposed to hypsometric color schemes, and are generally preferred by map readers. The creation of natural-color maps was once...
Dot mapping is a traditional method for visualizing quantitative data, but current automateddot mapping techniques are limited. The most common automated method places dotspseudo-randomly within enumeration areas, which can result in overlapping dots and verydense dot clusters for areas with large values. These issues affect users’ ability to estimatevalues. Graduated...
Visualizing large movement datasets with flow maps is difficult because overlapping flows create significant graphical conflicts that make accurate interpretation difficult or impossible. Interactive flow mapping applications allow users to explore large movement datasets by automatically generating flow maps from subsets of the data in response to queries by the...
Relief shading is the most common type of cartographic relief representation for print and digital maps. Manual relief shading results in informative and visually pleasing representations of terrain, but it is time consuming and expensive to produce. Current analytical relief shading can be created quickly, but the resulting maps are...