Tag archives for maps
Escape From Vietnam
Posted by Cathy Hunter on April 30, 2013 
On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam War officially ended with the fall of Saigon to Communist forces. Many Vietnamese fled their country, including one Special Forces officer who painstakingly planned his escape and paid $200 on the black market for a copy of a March 1971 National Geographic map to guide him.
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Join Marty Schnure and Ross Donihue as they embark on a cartographic expedition to create a map-based visual portal for exploring the Patagonia National Park Project.
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An interactive map, launched at Rio+20, seeks to help people keep up-to-date on the state of the Amazon basin.
Where scale permits
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 20, 2012 As is frequently the case, National Geographic mapmakers―for that matter, mapmakers worldwide―often face the problem of having to fit too much cartographic information into too little cartographic space. Scale, which defines the mathematical relationship between linear measurement on a map to that on the Earth’s surface, ultimately determines how much information can be portrayed on…
Where is Challenger Deep?
Posted by Michael Fry on April 17, 2012 
James Cameron’s recent voyage to the bottom of the sea made headlines worldwide. As well it should have–Cameron is the first person to venture alone to the deepest known part of the world’s oceans. His “vertical torpedo” submersible dove nearly 11,000 meters to a place he described as “lunar” and “desolate”–a place often called Challenger…
“A country once know as ……”
Posted by Juan Valdes on December 2, 2011 Over the past several days the media has been reporting on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Myanmar. Some have prefaced their reports using the following verbiage: “Myanmar, a country once know as Burma ……” In 1989 the largest nation on the Southeast Asian mainland changed its name from Burma to Myanmar―a…
Mapping Our Nation’s Ascendancy
Posted by Juan Valdes on November 3, 2011 This year marks the beginning of the Civil War’s Sesquicentennial. Just six months after commemorations began, sales of National Geographic’s Battles of the Civil War map have increased exponentially. It appears this key period of our nation’s history remains in the hearts and minds of many of our citizens. I was well reminded of this…
Spy Satellites, Google Earth Now Guarding World’s Great Ancient Sites
Posted by Brian Handwerk on September 9, 2011 Conservationists are using spy satellites, cutting-edge computer technology, and an expert human network to build an “early warning system” for some of the planet’s greatest—and most threatened—archaeological sites.
THE MAP OF MY DREAMS
Posted by Juan Valdes on July 26, 2011 In light of today’s Washington Post article , I wanted to share some thoughts on our new Cuba map . My career as a cartographer, and now as The Geographer, at the National Geographic Society, spans more than 30 years. In that time I have worked, in one manner or another, on most if not all…
“Giorraíonn Beirt Bóthar —Two shorten the road”
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 10, 2011 Southwestern County Donegal (Dún Na nGall), National Geographic’s map of Ireland (Éire) Depending on the type of map (whether physical or political), National Geographic maps use conventional (English) spellings, native spellings, or a combination of both (where scale permits). For example, when a commonly recognized form of a well-known place-name, such as Bombay,…
A Map Designers’ Journey Through Hallowed Ground
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 9, 2011 Having grown up in Virginia, working as the designer for the Journey Through Hallowed Ground map has brought back many fond memories. At one time or another, I have visited most of the towns, fished or canoed the creeks, and strolled through many of the parks shown on this map. For most native…
CUBA ON MY MIND: An Editorial Tour of the Island
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 7, 2011 Cuba Map: Editorial revisions on a section of the Final Correction copy. Twenty correction copies with over 800 revisions were made to the map before it was cleared to go on press. When I tell people that my profession is that of a map editor at National Geographic, I oftentimes get “What does that…
CUBA ON MY MIND: Creating a New Classic Map
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 7, 2011 Base map of Cuba as first exported from GIS prior to styling in Adobe Illustrator. Ever since first becoming a cartographer at the National Geographic Society it has been the creation of new maps that has so appealed to me. To take a mountain of lines, place-names, and other geographic data and meld it all…
CUBA ON MY MIND: Armchair Traveling
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 7, 2011 A georeferenced image of a NOAA Bathymetric chart overlaid on a GIS shapefile of area coastlines. As a National Geographic GIS Cartographer, people frequently inquire whether I get to travel to gather the data we use on our maps. I suppose National Geographic still evokes those romantic images of cartographers out in the…
CUBA ON MY MIND: Hitting the Cartographic Jackpot
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 7, 2011 New Cuban provinces as announced in the Gaceta Oficial de La Republica de Cuba, No. 023, September 2010 I have been assigned the task of researching and compiling our forthcoming map of Cuba. During the early stages of my research, I hit the cartographic jackpot—the possibility of two new provinces forming in 2011. Not only…
CUBA ON MY MIND
Posted by Juan Valdes on June 7, 2011 New and Complete Map of Cuba, supplement to National Geographic magazine, October 1906; NG Maps. Since our first post, this blog has addressed the history of cartography at National Geographic, geographic names (toponyms), and even the cartographic exploits of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American artist best known for the painting “Whistler’s Mother.” I hope…
The Known World
Posted by Cathy Hunter on May 13, 2011 “Universalis Cosmographia” by Martin Waldseemüller. The Known World of Edward P. Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is set in mythical Manchester County, Virginia before the Civil War and centers on the surprising and little-known practice of free blacks who themselves owned slaves. Jones’ depiction of life in that rural community is so detailed and nuanced,…
History’s Unheralded Geographers
Posted by Michael Fry on March 15, 2011 
A look at the artist James Whistler’s brief mapmaking career.
Posted by —Image courtesy NASA/JPL/University of Arizona Those of you who think it’s cool to drill into Google Maps and find, for example, your car sitting in your driveway, probably know that it’s all about coming to a resolution. The higher a camera’s resolution, the more details you can capture in a single image, and the deeper…
Crown of the Continent
Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff on May 12, 2009 We were checking out the guide for Crown of the Continent, a region spanning the U.S.-Canada border and surrounding Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park in southwestern Alberta, southeastern British Columbia, and northwestern Montana. The site’s a compendium of the best parks and wilderness areas, hiking and skiing trails, restaurants, lodges, festivals, and more, with native perspectives…
Posted by It is only relatively recently that it has dawned upon humans that the ocean is not something that can be taken for granted. Vast, deep, unfathomable in so many ways, the great body of liquid that envelops our planet at an average depth of some six miles acts as the main regulator of our weather…
Those sneaky folks at Google. Even as waves of coverage come pouring forth about the newly launched oceans layer in Google Earth, a short NASA press release and no more than a few lines in a couple news articles note that, oh, yeah, and by the way, there’s a new 3-D Mars layer too. Wha?!?!?…
Image courtesy GeoEye, Inc. Commercial satellite imagery of the Earth will be a lot sharper thanks to GeoEye-1, a spacecraft that can make images of objects on the ground as small as 16 inches (41 centimeters) — from more than 400 miles (640 kilometers) away. The satellite has been undergoing calibration and check-out since it was…
