I don't want to get rusty

Because I don't want to lose the mapmaking skills I've gained, I created this map of the Rowan journalism majors. It's not totally final yet -- I need to work on some of the aesthetics -- but it ain't half-bad.

Holiday gift for the map lover in your family

The author Vincent Virga was featured during a segment of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" today, Wed., Dec. 12, talking about his new book, "Cartographia." Here is the link to the show, where you can listen to the program and view some of the maps from his book.
He made several interesting points, one of which really struck me. He said mapmaking is about power -- those in power get to make the maps. Why else, he said, would Europe -- a peninsula smaller than India -- be a whole continent, while India is not? Food for thought!

My final Nike missile map

With the Rowan public folders being their typical fussy selves, I have stored my final map at this location.

Final project nearly there

Nearly there: Everything I want to do from here on out involves aesthetics, design, etc. Maybe changing the symbols (again!), realigning the main map to center it, etc. But I will be honest: I think this will work, if necessary.

Working on my final mapping project

Here are some early snapshots of my final project, as of Friday, Dec. 7:
This is an ArcGIS map of the .kml data imported from Google Earth of all 250 missile locations across the United States.
This is a close-in shot of the East Coast/New Jersey area
This is my tentative layout, using the default Layer Labeling.
This is the same look, but with my own labeling. I removed the names of the counties I do not want, and I capitalized the county names, so as to use Upper/Lower style for the missile sites.
This one adjusts some of the positioning, such as the off-center title, and adds a compass to the larger image.

The map is not the territory ...

I came across this blog item from my work inbox. I subscribe to the daily feed of the San Jose Mercury News (they provided the best info when Knight Ridder -- meaning us at the Daily News and Inquirer -- went on the auction block in 2005-6), and this is from their tech writer, about Google Maps' new features.

NatGeo cartographer takes to the airwaves

I didn't hear the segment in question, but apparently the folks at NPR's "Talk of the Nation" erroneously discussed that the Nile is the only river that flows south to north. To respond to their error, they invited Allen Carroll, Chief Cartographer for National Geographic, to talk about "why people tend to think that rivers run south." The discussion came at the end of Hour 1 today, 11/28, which is located at this link. Not every day that a cartographer appears on the radio. He talked a little about map layout, and our perceptions of which way North is. It was cool to hear his comments after taking this course.

Exercise 10, all four maps here

Here are the four maps for Exercise 10:
New Jersey population density
New Jersey physio-geographic features
Geologic hazards of the Western United States
Rainfall, South Asia cities
These could change between now and Monday, when they are due, but will be updated at these links.
Please note, there was some printing trouble with the South Asia map on Wed., 11/28, which I will try to rectify by using a different computer in the geography lab.

Vendee Globe, less than 1 year to go!

Here's a nice little animated (and slightly interactive) map of the upcoming around-the-world solo sailing race. Just a nice, quiet race -- all by your lonesome -- on the high seas for a few short months. No pressure: One foot on land or one foot on another boat, and BAM! you're out of the race.

New mapping link from UPenn

Thanks to my colleague Ed, for passing on this mapping site from the University of Pennsylvania. Looks like GIS for regular folks!
Here is the home page of this site.

Proposal for my class project on Nike bases

Here is a link to my proposal for my final project. I also will hand it in on Monday.

Exercise 9 (subtitled, Overcoming Cartographer's Block)

I had trouble coming up with something creative from the data presented for Exercise 9, but remembered seeing something in our text that I thought could be applied. I found a county-by-county chart from USA Today on how New Jersey went during the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry and George W. Bush. The Garden State is assumed to be a Democrat stronghold -- a blue state -- but examination of the data, as presented here, shows otherwise. Not the most original creation, but I think I did what was necessary, including playing with fonts (I like Arial, for the most part, though I had to tweak to get it to work well), color and placement of type, colors of the counties themselves (I wonder if the person who decided on blue and red got a patent), locating symbols, and other things. Many thanks, as always, to Dr. Hasse for his help on the legend.
I was unhappy with the scale bar; I just knew it was not right. I went over things in my head and determined that perhaps putting on a scale bar early, before I blew up the map, rendered it inaccurate once I did increase the size of NJ. Sure enough, I deleted what I had, and inserted a new scale bar, and Voila! Accuracy!
Now, who wants this info for 2008 ... Rudy? Hillary?

Putting the "urban" back in "New Urbanism"

Here's an interesting article about a new "development," Spring Arts Point, um, springing up in Philadelphia.

Navajo seek remedy for uranium sites

Here is an interesting map about uranium sites in Indian country out West.

Maps are stored in Yahoo, too

Because I seemed to have some problems with my H drive -- a few things disappeared for a while -- I've also stored everything in this Yahoo! Briefcase file.

Exercise 8 Final Map

Here is my latest final version of my page of four New Jersey maps. Everything is becoming more uniform and looking more as I want it. If time allows, I still want to work on my patches, maybe even some of my category numbers! This version slightly differs from what I am turning in, because of the difference in patches, classes, etc.

Exercise 8

This is my first draft of the New Jersey maps for Exercise 8. I probably will tinker with some of the legends and color bands, and I want to make them more uniform. It cannot be identical, because there are different numbers of classes, but the type and patch sizes can be more uniform.
Many thanks to Dr. Hasse for clearing up the legend "chatter" problem!

What is a data-delivery editor?

Here is a link to a new kind of online GIS specialist.....The data-delivery editor:

Class notebook missing

There is nothing life-altering or earth-shattering in it (nothing I cannot recreate), but my class notebook has gone missing. I was in two places on Monday, Robinson 306 and the Geography Dept. conference room. If it shows up, I'd appreciate being told. Just leave a comment here, and I will let you know how to get it back to me.

Shocking but true

Hard to believe in this day and age that we still have to keep track of things like this! Scroll down to the interactive map and see for yourself.

My updated maps

I still want to tinker with the legends, but here are the updated Gloucester County maps, as of Monday, 10/22:

Gloucester Country transport

Gloucester County physical features

Gloucester County flood-prone areas

Things I need to add to my maps

I realized this weekend that an outsider looking at these maps would have no idea what they are, so I must add to my maps:
Titles
Legends
My name
I intend to get to that on Monday, before class.

Exercise6

Here are the three maps created for this exercise:
Transport of Gloucester County
Physical Features of Gloucester County
Flood-prone areas of Gloucester County
I finally worked out the bugs. I originally was bleeped off at myself for not remembering to change the color of the roads until after I was done on Wednesday. I thought that if that's the worst thing I've done, then I'm fine.
Then, I came in Thursday and tried an experiment. Working without a net (no instructions), I loaded up an empty map and ArcCatalog, connected to the GC folder, switched the new, empty map to Layout Mode, added the Transport layer, clicked on the Roads Properties, and changed the color to something I thought would work better in contrast with the railroads, then saved the new version and exported the new version as a .jpg. I also did something similar with my Flood-prone map, when I realized two of the categories looked too similar. Doing this, I kept the original data the way it was, back in the GC folder. (Then, of course, on my way to work two hours later, it dawned on me that these latest versions of Transport and Flood-prone don't have my name on them -- I need to create a checklist for myself!)
Interesting process overall. When I was at the lab on Wednesday, I thought I had done OK by creating all of the layers by right-clicking each time, and I even got the maps to show up on my screen. Then, I closed out and opened back up, only to find those dreaded red exclamation points! I deleted all the layers and began again, using the drop-down File menu, etc., and making sure I stored the relative paths.
Here is an early version of the map with all of the layers, presumably in some kind of order (from the ground up), from before I changed the Transport and FloodProne maps.
I'd like to do more of this work, so that I can get things down cold. Any places where I can do that?

Berlin-Clementon Nike base site

Check out my Yahoo Briefcase folder here to see 5 images of the same abandoned Nike missile site. Notice the varying land uses, including the 1930s aerial shot of the farmland.

Yale library tutorial

Here is another link for me to use

Hello, old friends

Met up with a few old friends in class today -- Prime Meridian, the Cartesian coordinate system (with tag-along pals Sine and Cosine), and the Pythagorean theorem. Silly me, I once thought getting into journalism would keep me away from math; ha! and now the same is true for geography! Here we go.

Exercise04

Here is my latest version of Exercise 4, a map marking elevation and population density in Washington Township, Gloucester County, NJ. As you can see, I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of the chatter amid the legends. We'll try to get that fixed.
As for my critique of the cartographic design: As I expressed at the bottom of my map, the color scheme for the Elevation portion is not your typical color scheme and, in fact, makes it difficult to comprehend. Additionally, in looking at these two parts, side by side, it's not easy to recognize that they are both representations of the same place. The Elevation section actually looks larger than the Population Density section (and, if I may say so, looks a bit like a human heart). I also don't like the size and location of the Elevation legend; first, it cuts into a portion of the map with the shaded box around it, plus it leaves a lot of dead air underneath a good bit of that map. I think the overall appearance of the Population Density segments is better. It's easy to tell that the higher densities are represented by the darker colors (brown & gold = Rowan?); I am a fan of this kind of color range, because it shows the relationships among sections. I chose the pink-to-red scale for mine, because I think it shows the same thing. Somewhere in my text, as well, I read that we older folks like a map like this -- as opposed to one with many different colors -- because they are easier on the eyes.

Phila. area home prices: Interactive maps

Here is a neat link that tells Inquirer readers what the home values are in their communities.
Here is New Jersey, here is Pennsylvania, and here is Philadelphia.

Exercise 3

Tentative answers:
3.1: There are 12 layers in scene 1.
3.A: There are no layers of point data.
3.B: There are two layers of line data: CN stream and Gloucester County roads.
3.C: There are eight layers of polygons: watershed boundary, cn flood, cn wetlands, Rowan buildings, Rowan parking, Rowan paving, land use and each of the municipal boundaries.
3.D: There are two layers of raster data: elevation and orthophoto.

What happens when I click on GloCo. roads? The roads appear.

3.2: When you click on the far left of a row, that row turns light blue and the town's border lights up.
3.3: The largest municipality in GloCo. is Franklin Township, at 56.47 square miles. The smallest is Newfield Borough, at .78 square mile.
3.4: The greatest population in Glo.Co. in Pop2000 is Washington Township, at 47,114. The smallest is, again, Newfield, with 1,616.

3.5: The cn_watershed extends into Mantua Township, Harrison Township, Pitman and Glassboro.

3.6: The land use of Bunce Hall is marked as commercial/services. That might be accurate, as far as the town's land-use plan is concerned, but it seems inaccurate in the"real world." Perhaps it should be public, or institutional.

3.7: The highest point near Rowan University is The Ridge, which lies west-southwest of the campus.

Finally, in addint the kcsl2001.shp layer to this map, I discover that there are 12 known contaminated sites within the Chestnut Branch Watershed.

Questions involving my Nike base project

These are some of the early questions I must research as I work on this project?
1. What were these sites before they were Nike bases?
2. How were they obtained? What happened to the existing users (and uses)?
3. What was the criteria for picking these sites: location? Access to highways? Populations? Topography?
4. Why were they closed?
5. What happened to the sites once they were closed?
6. What kinds of remediation was necessary at these sites?
7. What are they now?

Idea for Class Project: Nike missile bases

At the height of the Cold War, a dozen anti-aircraft missile sites were located in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, including six in South Jersey, the PH command center for the entire grouping among them. The sites contained either conventional weaponry, nuclear weapons or both. This is a rough map I found online that marks the sites. I would like to create something similar, focusing on South Jersey, marking the command centers and launch sites, which, because of technology at the time, had to be located anywhere from a half-mile to a few miles away.
About 250 such sites were established across the United States. These sites began to be decommissioned by the early 1970s, as the United States found better ways (aka, more powerful missile systems) to protect its shores, and many of the sites have subsequently been demolished and turned over to private interests, which have largely turned them into suburbia.
The site in Marlton, N.J., is now the location of a housing development, located across from a high school. I'm still researching, but I believe the nuclear-warhead Berlin/Clementon site (actually Gloucester Township), which sits amid several fairly new strip malls, remains largely undeveloped. The Swedesboro (actually Woolwich Township) site just got the go-ahead to be developed. I thought I read it would be a small "smart growth" site, but I am not sure.
Always eager to hear suggestions as I begin this project.

Drivers are stuck in traffic; this is news?

Someone's hard-earned dollars went toward telling us what we already know -- that traffic is bad and it's getting worse!

KC-K or KC-Mo

The NPR program "Day to Day" had an interesting segment on the geographical and sociological differences between Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo.

Exercise 2 Answers

2.1. How easy did you find I-MAP NJDEP?
I found it quite easily, and quickly made a link to it on this blog, so that I can search again.

2.2. What kinds of data are available?
There are dozens of categories, everything from congressional, legislative, county and municipal boundaries to contamination sites to open space to water bodies to streams to various demarcations of wildlife data.

2.3. What kinds of data are not available that you would like to see?
Given the rise of bear and coyote sightings in NJ, it might be useful to map their territories. And, of course, given my affection for the issue of cemeteries and land use, I would like to see cemeteries marked, including the various types (public, historic, religious, etc.)

2.4. What level of user do you think would use this service (novice, educated adult, expert, etc)? Explain.
I think an educated adult or expert would be able to use this easily. Someone without any knowledge of mapping or geography might be limited.

2.5. What were the 3 most significant limitations that you encountered using I-MAP?
1- Not easy to step back in time, a-la move back several steps (more than one step), or at least I could not figure out how to do it. When I got stuck, I just started over.
2 - Like to see more variation, besides 1930 and 2002 views.
3 - Information is dated. To the best of my memory, I tore down our pool prior to 2002, but that image is still there.
4 - Perhaps I just couldn't spot it, but this does not seem to indicate zoning delineations

2.6. What are the benefits that you see for internet mapping technologies such as I-MAP?
I can work on a map without loading in mammoth software programs. And I can work on any computer, whether it is on the Rowan campus, hooked into the Rowan network or not.

2.7. How has the land in your neighborhood change since 1930?
It remains mostly rural, but there are a handful of more homes in my area, plus what appears to be relatively new-growth woods. About a half-mile from my home now is a very large lake, created from an old sand-mining site (and recently taken over by the NJ Fish and Wildlife folks). It is hard to tell whether it is there in 1930 or whether the 1930 image is just of the sand pit.
And, of course, there were no protected Pinelands in 1930. My property in on the fringe of the Pinelands.

Alternate Public Folder: IMGIS_Fall_07

Here is the link to an alternate public folder, in the event you or I cannot get all of the materials to the Rowan H drive.

My house 2002

This is the semi-correct picture of my home from 2002, although I believe it was longer than that since I had my backyard pool torn down (it was cheaper to have it knocked down and hauled away than to fix all the nicks and dinks to make it functional).

The purple line marks from the home to wetlands, a distance of a shade over 1,000 feet.

And here is a link to this item in my public folder. Here is a wider view from my public folder.

My house 1930

This is the picture of where my house was (not) located in 1930.

This is the link to this item in my public folder, and this is a wider view, complete with 2002 wetlands and 2002 body of water Penbryn Lake, or Penbryn Pond, created from a sand-mining pit.

My activity space

Here is the map I'm doing of my activities and travels for the week. You can also find it among the links to the left, titled "My activities map."

Architecture 2030 report on rising seas

Here is an important report on the effect of rising sea levels, complete with interactive visuals.

Another journalism tool ... and I'm sure I will find many more

Here is an interesting post from a blogger interested in seeing journalism survive in the 21st century. It's time to get authorities to provide lat & long with their information, so that mapping journalists can do their jobs.

Here's why I'm here

This and this are why I am in this class, and in this program.
Here is something I could do for the Philadelphia Daily News; this is at the Arizona Daily Star.

Exercise01

It was surprisingly easy to create a blog. This is one of a few that I've created, but it has been dormant forever.
This should be easy to turn in assignments. I don't anticpate any problems.
I also have a blog I created after taking Land Use, titled: whistlingpastgraveyard.blogspot.com, another (sadly) dormant blog about cemetery use in the United States.
Biosketch
Google Earth is a fun tool. I learned about last January, when I took Dr. Hasse's Land Use class. But we must remember that it is only a tool. For instance, the link to my house below had to be, um, tampered with, to point out my exact home location. Google got me in the neighborhood, but not to the home itself. Then there is the swimming pool in my back yard that hasn't been there for about 5-6 years. So, someone who thinks I have a pool is grossly mistaken. Then there is the case of someone I know who needed directions in Cherry Hill and found an aerial shot of Garden State Park racetrack (RIP). So, have fun with this, but don't let it be a substitute for legwork.
EXERCISE_01


-30- (this is a newspaper symbol signifying the end of a story)