Earth Transit

 Earth Transit is a project by Zhaoxu Sui showing the major passenger rail lines of the world.

In his own words "This is the beta version, which means a lot of errors and mistakes could be on the map, please give me corrections and suggestions so that I can improve." Lines are color coded by railway companies. The ambition of this is huge and at this scale it is not possible to show all railway lines in places as dense as Europe,

or maybe China.

There is not an obvious link but you can download a high resolution image by clicking on the picture and saving it or from this link. It's fun (for people like me anyway) to pan around and see what the railway network looks like in places like Central Asia (nice mountains!),

southern Africa,

 and Cuba.

Here are the railways I know and love in my part of North America.

More on the project here. Enjoy!

Global Inflation

Inflation is causing economic stress here in the United States. It is often covered in the news as a failure of the US economy, but as this map shows, inflation is a global phenomenon and the United States is in one of the lower categories.

The map, via statista show projections from April, 2022. The countries with higher rates tend to be "developing nations" that are experiencing inflation as a consequence of economic growth. The highest rates are found in countries that are experiencing conflict such as Venezuela (500%*-ouch!) and Sudan. The accompanying article on statista, explains the inflation situation in much greater detail. 

Another map from statista, that is on Forbes, shows global gas prices.

The United States is in the middle category here but still gas is much cheaper here than in Canada, Europe, South and Eastern Asia and Australia. While this map is also a few months old, the current info from Global Petrol Prices still has the US in the same approximate position.

While looking for more information on statista, I found this interesting map showing ships are currently jammed up trying to get to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. Delays in container shipping are one of the major stressors contributing to inflation.

* In looking at inflation trends I've seen other numbers for Venezuela that are around 250%. I imagine it's not easy getting accurate numbers given the political turmoil in that country.

The New York Times Covid-19 Site

 Much praise over the last six months has been lavished on the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Dashboard. I have always found that site hard to read with too much information in one place. I find the New York Times graphics to be a huge improvement.

The color scheme is much easier on the eyes. One of the best things is that the data is by census tract (I'm pretty sure that's how it is aggregated) so you get a much better sense of where cases are. Also it keeps the mostly empty areas uncolored so the reader is not overwhelmed. Texas is a good example-you can choose any state to see maps and graphs. You can see how Hale County is considered a hot spot but within the county the cases are primarily around Plainview in the northeastern corner.

The graphs do an excellent job of showing the trends since March.

The state and territories are sorted by most cases per capita and you can see the difference between places that are having a huge uptick now (the Dakotas) versus ones that are having a second big wave (Guam, Utah, Idaho). It is also notable that Guam and Nebraska had much earlier first waves than Idaho and Utah.

Both these sites also offer the world view. It is interesting to see how the African countries have kept their cases very low, especially compared to Europe.

The "small multiple" charts are also a nice touch.

Much more to explore here.

 

Where Pandemics Originate

This map - via ScienceDirect shows where pandemics have newly emerged or re-surged. "Disease emergence reflects dynamic balances and imbalances, within complex globally distributed ecosystems comprising humans, animals, pathogens, and the environment. " The article also states that "newly emerging (and re-emerging) infectious diseases have been threatening humans since the neolithic revolution, 12,000 years ago, when human hunter-gatherers settled into villages to domesticate animals and cultivate crops."

Hopefully the map will challenge typical western assumptions about where pandemics originate.

Mapping Worldwide effects of COVID-19

COVID-19 Dashboard is a concerted effort between the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It combines the resources of these three agencies to visualize the environmental and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Move around the map to see indicators color coded by relationship to normal baseline data. Green is better, blue is similar and red is worse.

For example, the air quality in many cities including New Delhi has gotten better with the decreased level of economic activity. Click on a point to reveal a detailed chart showing the changes in the selected factor.

Other indicators include water quality.

Here you can use a slider to compare conditions in the Venice Lagoon between January and June.

Economic activity indicators include shipping and agriculture. This graph shows how harvests have slowed in the Castille and Leon region of Spain due to the decreased mobility of seasonal workers.

You can also see night light images of various cities and compare different months.

More to see here

Data Atlas of the World

Carrie Osgood, data designer and owner of CLO Communications has created the Data Atlas of the World. Her unique signature of representing countries as circles, mostly sized by population provides an interesting perspective. The images below have been shared with kind permission by Carrie Osgood; This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Examples include a map of languages,

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

and religion. Christianity is blue, Islam green, Hindu reddish brown, and Buddhist orange. Yellow is other, and gray is atheist/agnostic.

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

These maps are available via a subscription service. Here are a couple more examples that she has kindly provided me with. Note that due to both screen limitations and by request from the publisher these maps are only partially shown.
Here are some more -  the world sized by size!

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

Income inequality via the Gini Index. Blues are more equal, reds are the most unequal.

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

I really like this population change map.

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

Each concentric ring represents another time interval and the orange and red ones show future projections. Blues are 1960, then 1975, greens are 1987 and 1999, and yellow is 2011. Projected values are for 2025 (orange), and reds for 2040 and 2060. It gives an excellent sense of when each country grew or will grow the most.
Other maps include economic factors, quality of life measures such as access to drinking water, and change in life expectancy.
There are also environmental factors such as carbon dioxide emissions per capita,

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

and percentage of people living at sea level.

© Carrie Osgood | CLO Communications | DataWorldAtlas.com

You can see previews of most of the maps and sign up for a subscription here

Grab Bag

Here's a bunch of random maps. They won't "change the way you see the world" like so many other clickbait-y sites claim. They're just kind of interesting, or pretty, or something. Click on the map for the original source and higher resolution.

Meat Production on Ranches - via Pearson Education though I lost the link.

Tasmania's cartographic revenge - via Reddit

WestJet Destinations, 2000 featuring a Canada without Montreal or Toronto.

Proposed development of Toronto's industrial waterfront, 1910

- via Toronto Public Library

Saloons, free theatre and "houses of ill fame" in Buffalo, 1893. If you're looking for this neighborhood, it's basically been torn down and replaced with expressways. Easy access from the Children's museum though.

Geo-Eye (Mount Inasa), 2015 by Takahiro Iwasaki carved on a roll of vinyl electrical tape. Iwasaki is a Hiroshima-based artist. Mount Inasa is in Nagasaki.

Where Europe and Asia would fit in North America climate-wise - via askthebirds

Tourism map - where to see whales, seabirds and icebergs in Newfoundland And Labrador - issuu.

Whales and dolphins in Costa Rica - via Enter Costa Rica

Equal Earth

Equal Earth is a new map projection introduced this past fall. It aims to solve the problem of showing countries at their true sizes projected from a spheroid to a flat piece of paper. The most commonly used world projection is the Mercator, great for navigating but terrible for distorting relative landmass sizes - here's an example.

By contrast here is the Equal Earth Projection.

In addition to the comically monstrous Antarctica, the commonly cited comparison is Greenland vs. South America. Of course many of us in the upper latitudes like the Mercator because it makes our countries look larger and therefore more important. It also makes Russia look scary.

 from The Growth of Russian Imperialism - Cornell digital library.

The problem is that people's perceptions of country and continent sizes once formed are hard to shake. This problem has been amplified by Google's use of Mercator in their maps. Google Maps is so popular that they have created a de-facto standard that most other digital world maps have followed.

One remedy to showing such unequal areas has been to promote the Gall-Peters projection, a rather ugly (my opinion) projection that cartographer Arthur Robinson described as continents that look like wet laundry hung out to dry.

The Boston Public Schools recently began using these maps in their classrooms. As a response Bojan Šavrič (Esri), Tom Patterson (US National Park Service), and Bernhard Jenny (Monash University) developed this new projection. It is based on Arthur Robinson's projection. Here are comparisons of the Equal Area Projection with Gall-Peters,

and with the Robinson Projection.

The projection has been very well received and is already being used by organizations such as NASA. and major GIS software companies.

In addition to the projection, they also created some very attractive, downloadable world maps designed for classroom use. These maps have three versions, one centered on 0 degrees longitude for best viewing Europe and Africa, one at 90 degrees west for the Americas and one at 150 east for East Asia, Australia and the Pacific.
There are two versions, a Political map,

and a Physical Map

For the maps and more info visit their home page.

The Costs of War

This map via Smithsonian Magazine shows much* of the breadth of US military and government anti terrorist actions.

The map was developed by Brown University's Costs of War Project. Since the image is a bit blurry when zoomed in, here is a detail from their web page,

and also an enlarged legend.

 "We found that, contrary to what most Americans believe, the war on terror is not winding down—it has spread to more than 40 percent of the world’s countries."

Read more at: Smithsonian and even more at the Costs of War Project

  
* as stated in the article "U.S. efforts to combat terrorism abroad are likely more extensive than this map shows."

Aerosol Earth

NASA's Earth Observatory created this stunning image of aerosols - airborne particles and liquid droplets.

These aerosols "range in size from a few nanometers—less than the width of the smallest viruses—to several several tens of micrometers—about the diameter of human hair. Despite their small size, they have major impacts on our climate and our health." - via NASA aerosol page

In the image above blue represents sea salt. The concentrated areas show major storms, particularly two cyclones off the coasts of Japan and Korea and a hurricane approaching Hawaii. Red indicates black carbon, mostly from agricultural burning in Africa and Wildfires. Purple is dust, mostly from deserts. Also included is a layer of white night light data to indicate urban areas. Here is the legend enlarged for emphasis.

The NASA page includes a zoomed in detail from southern Asia, emphasizing the deserts, cyclones and population centers of the area.

More from NASA here.