Monochrome Mapping

Cartographer Daniel Huffman hosted a monochrome mapping competition on his blog. He posted the results yesterday. Keep in mind that monochrome does not necessarily mean black and white. It refers to two colors, usually a foreground color (often black) and a background color (often white) with shades (ie. grays) of in between color. In the case below the foreground color is green with a pink-ish background.

Sarah Bell - Inland Northwest Washington Art Deco Map

Here are some of my favorites. Click on them to see the maps in their entirety.

Ireland by Alex Hotchkin. Some of the details are a bit fanciful and I'm not sure what those stone (?) formations are north and west of Belfast. Here is a bit of the southwest.

For a more computer produced but still beautiful look here is an Appalachian Trail fold out shelter map by John Nelson and Erich Rainville using a blue-white color scheme.

Here is a map of Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands by Heather Smith. The hand drawn topographic shading is particularly nice.

A flow map of the Grand River in Ontario by Warren Davison done blueprint style.

Finally this brown (bistre) and black map of Alaska's Tongass National Forest by Evan Applegate, Matt Strieby, Aiyana Udesen, and Ezra Butt.

The map faeturse a diagram of the trees of the area at the bottom,

and this nicely done locator map, accompanied by colorful text such as "glaciers hemorrhaging water so blue it hurts your teeth to even look upon't...." It also contains a plea to "write some checks" to prevent the "moribund timber industry" from knocking down more of the old growth forest.

Other highlights include a stunning relief map of Peru, a hand drawn historic map of Paris and a "wealth topography" of LA. To see the full range of maps go here.

Drifters on the Ocean

In May, 1990 a storm off the coast of Alaska knocked containers off a ship that was on its way from Korea to the United States. Some of the containers broke open sending 61,000 Nike shoes on a journey through the North Pacific Ocean. The following winter hundreds of Nikes washed up on the shores of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

To oceanographers these shoes are "drifters," floating objects that enable them to test models of ocean currents. A model known as the Ocean Currents Simulator (OSCURS) predicted that most of these shoes would make landfall in British Columbia about 249 days after the accident. The first ones were found there 220 days after. Later shoes were found off the coast of Oregon showing that the currents diverted some of them to the south. A year and a half later some of them made landfall in Hawaii.

In early 1992, a similar accident sent a bunch of toy ducks into the ocean. Here is a map of "possible journeys" and places they were found over the next 11 years.

To reach the Atlantic Ocean they had to pass through the icy Arctic. They have lost their color, according to this article but many are still floating out there.

For more about ocean currents see these pages from the SEOS project.

40 Maps That Won't Explain Anything - Part 2

Here's the second installment of 40 Maps That Won't Explain Anything - Part 1 with a snarky explanation about this series is here.

11. Hand painted map of submarine fiber optic cables. A zoomable version is here.

12. James Niehues makes pretty ski area maps. Here's Mt Alyeska in Alaska with the aurora borealis lighting up the sky.

13. Upside down 1963 Esso map for travelers going from New York to Florida.

14. "Eastern Shore of Virginia - Most Fertile Trucking Area in the United States" G.L. Webster Canning Co.

15. Map of San Seriffe - from a Guardian April fool's prank.

16. Majority Home Heating Fuel Type - Washington. From the American Community Survey.

17. TweetMap - heat map showing where people were tweeting using the hashtag #Phillies last summer.

18. The Tacony Hoagie Trail in Northeast Philadelphia. Go for a healthy hike!

19. The Japan Railways System

20. 1915 stamp featuring a map of Mexico

A Mappy Day at the U-Haul Store

A couple of years ago I had a post about maps on U-Haul trucks. Today I had to go to the U-Haul store. While there I saw some more nice trucks.

This Missouri truck features the bats of Onondaga Cave State Park. From close up the bat at the top looks like its hanging right off the truck. I like the gratuitous highway details around St. Louis. The full graphic can be seen here.

The Alaska truck shows a large goshawk. The close up view reveals some nice relief detail of the Tongass National Forest.

Iowa's truck features the Manson Impact Crater. This crater is 24 miles in diameter and is believed to be caused by a meteor's impact 74 million years ago.

 Off goes the Missouri bat-mobile on a mission!

In the interest of full disclosure this was actually taken on a different day in a different location.

Preserving Endangered Languages in Alaska

The Alaska Native Language Center in an attempt to preserve indigenous languages has created this striking map of language groups. Some of the languages represented on this map are spoken by fewer than 10 people, others are no longer spoken.

The map is an update of a 1974 map by Michael Krauss that was a result of a linguistic survey focused on variations in pronunciations. Krauss gathered much of his language information from patients at the Alaska Native Service Hospital. There is a detailed history of this and previous Russian and American maps on the Resources pages from the Center's website.  There is also a detailed discussion of the sometimes controversial choices made for language names and spellings. Interestingly many of the language names translate to mean either "people of this region" or "real", "true" or "genuine" person.

The Resources pages also provide guidance in giving your dog a traditional Native Alaskan name. Some examples:

maguyuk  'howler'
pakak  'one that gets into everything'
pamiiruq  'wags his tail'
pukiq  'smart'
qannik  'snowflake'
qimukti  'puller'
tupit  'tattoo lines on face'
pukulria  'bone chewer'
yakone'  'red aurora'
shtiya  'my strength'