MSIA Mapping Sciences Institute, Australia

eCARTO
www.mappingsciences.org au
C ar t o g ra p h y m at t e rs
ICA member: ABN 53 004 301 811: Acn 004 301 811

September 2011
If you have any brief items of interest to fellow MSIA members please email them to davidfraser60@optusnet.com.au for eCARTO. If you have MSIA specific items please email them to les.isdale@iinet.net.aufor the new MSN-Connected newsletter.

Quotes
The stars are not wanted now, put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. W.H. Auden (In response to the solution to the longitude problem. Perhaps the same quote could be used today
in response to GPS)

One for the Diary

Brisbane International Geospatial Forum 8 - 10 July, 2012 'Global Connections through Mapping' Brisbane, Australia Hosted by Mapping Sciences Institute, Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Map Society and the International Map Trade Association. A combined Conference and Trade Show. Further information: (website) www.imtamaps.org ; (email) imtaaspac@chariot.net.au

Geoscience Australia Review Two Outcomes

Office of Spatial Data
The Geoscience Australia Review, announced in the 2011-12 Budget, recommended aligning the new Office of Spatial Data with the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism. This move has occurred.

Office of Spatial Policy (OSP)

The Office of Spatial Policy (OSP), incorporating the former Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM), is now the Governments central policy unit that will provide direction at a whole-of-government level for the creation, acquisition and management of spatial data across the Commonwealth. The Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism is seeking a suitably qualified candidate to provide strategic leadership and management of the new Office of Spatial Policy (OSP). The closing time and date for these roles is 5:00pm (AEST) 22 September 2011. www.ret.gov.au
(Thanks to John Manning for providing the original documents)

Cartography in the Media

England riots: The feast of fools?
6 September 2011

The BBC plotted the home addresses of 197 people charged with riot-related offences at Manchester City Magistrates Court up until 23 August, against levels of deprivation across the city.

This graphic is made from the ONS's map of Super Output Areas combined with data from Manchester Council. Deprivation is shown as indices of the ONS' Multiple Deprivation score (not rank) from 2010.

Go to link:>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14812819

Antarctica's Ice Flow Fully Mapped For the First Time

First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's ALOS PALSAR, the European Space Agency's Envisat ASAR and ERS-1/2, and the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-2 spacecraft. The color-coded satellite data are overlaid on a mosaic of Antarctica created with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Pixel spacing is 984 feet

"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."

Go to link:>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/21/antarctica-ice-flow-map_n_932467.html

Amateur cartographers mistaken for criminals

By Olivia Solon 19 August 11

It's not just rioters who are being clamped down on by police, so too are the map enthusiasts who contribute to the open source cartography project OpenStreetMap. Some 400,000 volunteers collaborate to provide free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. In order to collect data, amateur cartographers travel around different locations with a GPS tracker, making notes of the names of roads and taking photographs of landmarks and street furniture. Late last month, OpenStreetMap contributor Eriks Zelenka was arrested while out mapping near Reading because "a paranoid guy called the police". He tried to explain that he was mapping, but because the area had had a few burglaries in the area, they didn't believe him. Police searched Zelenka's flat and he spent six hours in a police station where his fingerprints and DNA were put on record. He wrote about it on his OpenStreetMap diary, and many other members commented that they had had similar experiences.

Go to link:>
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-08/19/mappers-targeted-by-police

Everything Sings: Making the Case for a New Cartography

By Kirstin Butler Sep 6 2011, 12:07 PM ET

What This American Life's Ira Glass has to do with atlas antagonism, or what plotting carved pumpkins reveals about place The most intimate infographics of all may be maps, those images that tell of our complicated relationships to place, bounded by time. Or at least, this is just one of the interesting arguments made by the book Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas, a beautiful exploration of a small North Carolina neighborhood that also provides a platform for much larger ideas. We've long believed in the transformative power of maps, which was why we immediately fell in love with Everything Sings and its author, Dennis Wood. A kind of counter-culture cartographer, Wood has for decades sought ways to call the seeming objectivity of maps into question.

Go to link:>
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/everything-sings-making-the-case-for-a-newcartography/244596/

Review - Space, Place and Mental Health

by Sarah Curtis Ashgate, 2010 Review by Diana Soeiro Aug 16th 2011 (Volume 15, Issue 33)

Significant developments in geography always were deeply connected with map drawing and cartography. In the early 90s, after a long period where geography was taken as a science that did not have much to offer apart from satisfying the curiosity of those interested in map history and map collecting, geography started emerging again. A combination of several factors were responsible for a growing relevance of geography among social sciences, and it did not take long until it was acknowledged as a unique science that has what it takes to uncover possible relations in today's world. Climate change, migrations, food shortage, fast growing urban environments, sustainability, sea rising, over (and sub) populating areas, ecology and many other issues can and should be addressed by physical geography, human geography and urban geography. Adding to that, the rapid growth and development of new technologies also have contributed to new data access and processing of information allowing the establishment of more reliable patterns and more accurate mapping relations. The emergence of a global scale geography, more quantitatively sustained, asked for had an equally fundamental theoretical and critical development. That has been happening, and therefore geography has been growingly being validated as a key science among social sciences. Sarah Curtis's book title is integrated in the field of medical or health geography and it specifically aims to approach both critical and theoretically health related issues mapping the access to health care and health care providers; and the effect of the environment on health (and disease). It is therefore usually included in human geography but because ecology plays a significant role, it also requires a close connection with epidemiology and climatology.

Go to link:>
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6195&cn=139

Cartographic Profile
Founder of Google Maps Lars Rasmussen on starting up, hitting the big time and the dumping Google Wave
Friday, 09 September 2011 09:20 Oliver Milman

Lars Rasmussen confesses that he doesn't have much of a sense of direction. But that didn't stop him creating Google Maps, one of the world's leading tech success stories of the past decade. In a recent trip back to Australia, where Google Maps was born, Rasmussen, now a top engineer at Facebook, chatted to StartupSmart about innovation, entrepreneurship and failure. "Once you get a taste of entrepreneurship, it's a bug that's hard to get rid of," he says. "Don't tell Mark (Zuckerberg) this, but I almost had more fun when we were a struggling start-up." "What I like about Facebook is it is a young and fresh company that has an entrepreneurial attitude." Danish-born Rasmussen co-founded Where 2 Technologies with his brother Jens in 2003. It was subsequently bought by Google. The rest, as they say, is mapping history. Here are some of his pearls of wisdom. Lars on. ..People told me that Maps wouldn't work and if you want to be entrepreneurial, you have to prove them wrong. If people say 'this hasn't been done before, it won't work', you need to get past that.

Go to link:>
http://www.smartcompany.com.au/entrepreneurs/20110909-founder-of-google-maps-larsrasmussen-on-starting-up-hitting-the-big-time-and-the-dumping-google-wave.html

Humanitarian Cartography
The place that wasn't there
By Michael Dumiak 06 April 11

Since Kibera was deemed illegal in 1963, the Kenyan state has tried to destroy it. One of the biggest slums in the world, Kibera is certainly troubled, says map and web developer Mikel Maron. "But people are very proud. It was built not only without the help of authorities, but with active hostility." Kibera has no official status and, as such, little access to sanitation. Maron, with activist Erica Hagen and a team of residents, are changing that with the MapKibera project. Maron and Hagen gave Garmin GPS units to locals to collect points and map tracks. Then, with OpenStreetMap tools, users apply Wiki-like ideas to mapping, using GPS devices, phones, satellite or aerial photography to create raw data. Since the project began in 2009, the government has upgraded conditions in the 4,450m2 site, and details of clinics, schools, and media outlets are now publicly available to residents. Maybe now Kibera won't be so easy to ignore. mapkibera.org

Go to link:>
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/05/start/the-place-that-wasnt-there

Community Cartography
I Believe: 'Mapping our places helps us know where we are, who we are, and what we have'
4:12 AM, Aug. 22, 2011

I Believe essayist Julia Shipley writes about the power of mapping and how cartography helps us understand better our sense of place. / RYAN MERCER, Free Press Do you know the best climbing tree in your neighborhood? Or where wild leeks grow? Could you point out the perfect spot to watch the Fourth of July parade? Can you explain why Rural Route 1 was renamed West Hill Pond Road and then renamed Coits Pond Road? Which is the steepest sliding hill? Could you show exactly where the cows get out each summer and munch the roses? The people in Cabot can answer all those questions, and furthermore can describe and explain their intricate connection to the place they live. As part of a Community Mapping Project, residents ages 5 to 75 have been making maps of meaningful places within their community for almost a year. They've charted everything, including the scary spider that lives in a woodshed, the old town water pump at the far end of a front lawn, the best place to consume Starbusts purchased from the Cabot General Store.

Wendell Berry, a farmer, writer and philosopher , put it succinctly when he said, "If you don't know where you are, then you don't know who you are." The project is sponsored by the Cabot Chronicle, a monthly newspaper dedicated to "publishing local news for the residents of the Cabot area." In fall 2010 the Cabot Coalition sponsored three mapping workshops to recognize, celebrate and share personal stories about the barns, fields, forests, houses, rivers , roads, schools, shops and yards where they live their lives. Using markers and sheets of blank copy paper and poster board, participants began to diagram the "places they know better than anybody" those places where they make difficult decisions, those places where play and dream, those places where they realize the beauty that surrounds them. Then, each month, beginning in October 2010, the Cabot Chronicle has featured one of these hand-drawn maps accompanied with commentary by the cartographer in a column called: "Our Town mapping a sense of place." What Cabot is creating, map by map, column by column, is a community atlas of their connections to place, or, in other words, a comprehensive, collective answer to where they are and thus who they are, and what matters to them.

Go to link:> http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110821/GREEN01/108210305/IBelieve-Mapping-our-places-helps-us-know-where-we-who-we-what-we?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

A World Map That Doubles As A Bio Of Its Creator

Carlos Romo Melgars Cosmographies makes a detailed map of his adopted home of Madrid, but the landmarks are his own. While our new smartphones track our every footprint with self-generating maps -- see James Bridles recent book of iPhone maps that pinpointed his location over the course of a year -Carlos Romo Melgars "Cosmographies" goes in the opposite direction with some necessary view-from-his-world corrective. Theyre a map/infographic hybrid, like if Nicholas Feltons annual Feltron Report got processed through Saul Steinbergs "View of the World." The maps are a record of Melgar's own movements and favorite places, a mental scan of the city in which the planimetric is personal.

In the image above, gray flags denote friends houses -- Ceci, Juan, Elena Alvar -- and blue flags, for the gym, locate his regular hot spots. Chamartin, a little-admired train station by the Spanish architect team Corrales y Molezun, is highlighted because its Melgars hometown stop on the train. Speech bubbles appear throughout the city neighborhoods, filled with comments that Melgar has heard or experienced over the years there. Some museums, like the Reina Sofia, are highlighted while others are ignored completely.

Melgar says that this kind of cartographical representation, which he calls owncartography, allows one observation point to influence all the relationships and distances.

Go to link:> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664889/a-world-map-that-doubles-as-a-bio-of-itscreator

One Persons View of Our Technology

Technology? Hah! Try finding buried treasure using your GPS
August 27, 2011 Opinion

Illustration: Simon Letch. . Australia is full of these towns that don't really exist. Out west, the landscape is dotted with them; a large bullseye on the map, drawing you in. "We'll stop there for petrol and a delicious counter meal," you say to each other as you calculate the distance to this thriving settlement. An hour later, you arrive. There's a road sign half-eaten by termites and a farm with an angry dog at the gate. For all these disappointments, I'm still a big fan of maps. I can't imagine a holiday that doesn't start with a map - the intrepid voyagers standing at the kitchen table, the map spread out, letting themselves be drawn by names, the patches of national park, the curve of a beach. Last week they announced the demise of the "glove-box Gregory's'' - the map that has guided Sydneysiders for 75 years. The publication has fallen foul of GPS technology - the patient, insistent, slightly maddening voice that now directs our every movement.

I understand the attraction of the GPS navigator. You don't have to stop and look at the map. You are warned to get in the left-hand lane. And you don't have a terrible fight with your partner, who has just spent the past 40 minutes holding the map the wrong way up. Marriages have been saved, collisions averted and petrol saved. The price is that you can only ever arrive where you've already planned to go. The GPS is about setting a route and then following it. It turns the driver into a cog in the machine. There are times when it directs you the wrong way down a one-way street and you half convince yourself it's not your responsibility. "Don't blame me, officer, I was just carrying out orders."

Go to link:>
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/technology-hah-try-finding-buriedtreasure-using-your-gps-20110825-1janr.html#ixzz1XQ6AtMdc

Cartography Sites Compiled by Spatial Source

Best of the Blogs 23/8/11 from SPATIAL SOURCE
Published on Tue, 23/08/2011, 10:21:49

The New York Times has a piece recounting the history of lithographer/cartographer John Bachmann, the man that coined the term Birds eye view, and how his maps helped a population with little cartographic literacy make sense of the war they were in the middle of. The Sydney Morning Herald have a sad piece that marks the end of an era for a piece of Sydneys cultural history: the final edition of The Gregorys. GIS User have thrown together a brief little Geo-geek Speak reference list containing some popular terms used in the geo world. How many did you recognise? In light of the upcoming 10 year anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, the AP have put together an overview of the inconsistent, befuddling, and often ineffectual attempts, post 9-11, of American governments to hide sensitive information in the information age. Computerworld NZ has an article talking about the IT lessons learned from the Christchurch earthquakes, including the shift from process-based decisions to outcome-based decisions, and a greater emphasis on field technology. Google Maps Mania points us toward a map made by CNN that charts the Unrest in the

Arab world sparked by the Arab Spring. The map allows you to click on individual countries and read an overview of events since the unrest began earlier this year. Vector One points us to a whole new blog that talks about analytical methods in historical cartography. It should be of interest to anyone that gets into the nitty gritty of cartographic analysis. Vector Ones post about the blog does such a good job of summarising what its all about, so go check it out.

Go to link:>
http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2011/08/23/article/Best-of-the-Blogs23811/SLMIPLPGEO.html

Cartography - Global Village

Mapping Africa: Problems of Regional Definition and Colonial/National Boundaries
by Ralph A. Austen
frica is perhaps the most "mapped" of the world's major regions. Back in my school days during the 1940s and 1950s, the continent was studied only in geography classes. If it appeared at all in studies of history or politics, the central issue was colonialism, which again involved maps of the boundaries which European powers had drawn between the territories they carved out for themselves. Once African Studies came into maturity as a study of developments within indigenous societies and cultures, there was an understandable hostility to maps as external impositions. Nonetheless, cartography is essential to grasping both the forces within Africa and the constraints--both natural and political--which continue to place this region at a disadvantage in the global order. More specifically, maps can help us understand three major issues in the history of Africa: first, the physical and ecological factors which define this continent both internally and in relationship to the outside world; secondly, indigenous representations of space in the precolonial era, which provide a basis for putting more recent Western cartography into perspective; and, finally, colonial boundaries, which represent both European interventions in Africa and the continuing cartography of postcolonial development. Continent/regions: Geometry and geography In its most basic cartographic representation, Africa is a well-defined geometric entity: a continent surrounded by natural bodies of water on all sides except for a small isthmus in the extreme northeast joining it to western Asia (and even this is now broken by the Suez Canal). There is, however, a geographic convention of dividing Africa into Mediterranean and sub-Saharan zones, with the former treated as an extension of the Middle East ("Maghreb" the Arabic term for North Africa means "West") while the latter is the "true" Africa. Another division distinguishes tropical and temperate zones, with the latter category including not only the Maghreb but also South Africa, whose relative hospitality to European settlement is thus explained. Such distinctions are not politically acceptable in present-day Africa (the Organization of African Unity includes states from all portions of the continent) but maps can help us decide whether they have any geographical and historical justification.

Go to link:>
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122619/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three Azerbaijan items below: Why? Well, they kept on popping up during my web-searching, obviously wanting to be included in eCARTO.

Maps of National Park and Reserve on Samur prepared

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Maps of Samur-Yalama National Park and SamurYalama State Natural Reserve have been prepared. State Committee on Land and Cartography of Azerbaijan has reported that work has been carried out within realization of decision 156s of the Cabinet of Ministers from 16 June 2011. Work on cartography of these protected territories was then committed to Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry (orderer) and National Industrial centre of state Land Cadastre and Monitoring under State Committee on Land and Cartography. The prepared maps have already been presented to the consumer and experts of German Development Bank KfW, financing creation of Samur-Yalama National Park.

http://abc.az/eng/news_03_09_2011_57254.html

Azerbaijan to Send Protest Letter to Google

Sunday, 14 August 2011 12:04

Azerbaijan State Land and Cartography Committee will appeal to Google in connection with the distortion of geographical names in Azerbaijan in the satellite images posted on the Google Maps, chief of topography, geodesy and cartography department of the State Land and Cartography Committee Rafig Huseynli told. Huseynli said such cases happened several times, the State Land and Cartography Committee sent the reports to the National Security Ministry, relevant government agencies, letter of protest to the company. After the letters were sent, Google made some corrections in the maps.

According to Rafig Huseynli, they will appeal to the company for the elimination of the mistakes after they familiarize with Google map 2011. We will demand the company to eliminate the mistake. Azerbaijani geographical names were also shown with Armenian names in one of the websites of Microsoft. We expressed our protest. After that some changes were made in the maps, he said. http://www.historyoftruth.com/news/latest/9972-azerbaijan-to-send-protest-letter-to-google

Azerbaijan wants to become a member of Eurogeographics and International Property Association

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. State Committee for Property Issues of Azerbaijan has initiated the process of joining Eurogeographics (unites national agencies on cartography, property registry and cadastre) and International Property Association.

http://abc.az/eng/news_20_08_2011_56961.html

Education
AFRITERRA The Cartographic Free Library
The AFRITERRA Foundation is a non-profit Cartographic Library and Archive assembling and preserving the original rare maps of Africa in a definitive place for education and interpretation. We view cartography as a medium that uniquely links art, technology, and history.

The Afriterra Foundation mission centers on a long-term educational commitment to: Provide access to cartographic material Create a visual connection to heritage Transport through time and space Internalize a distant place Touch and feel a foundation Draw a line of continuity Know the geography of the land Give homage to the ancestors of the Diaspora*.

Go to link:>
http://www.afriterra.org/ *A diaspora (from Greek , "scattering, dispersion") is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora

The true true size of Africa

Kai Krause, a computer-graphics guru, caused a stir with a map entitled "The True Size of Africa", which showed the outlines of other countries crammed into the outline of the African continent. His aim was to make "a small contribution in the fight against rampant Immappancy"in particular, the fact that most people do not realise how much the ubiquitous Mercator projection distorts the relative sizes of countries.

Go to link:>
http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg

GIS Technology Expert Emphasizes Well-Rounded GIS Education

Education Featured Article TMCnet Education Technology August 19, 2011

By Nathesh, TMCnet Contributor

Caitlin Dempsey, the editor of GISLounge, the GIS technology news site and one of the industrys renowned technology experts, shared her thoughts with American Sentinel University, a higher education institution that offers two dedicated undergraduate GIS degrees to prepare students for entry into the GIS field. Dempsey emphasized that employers are looking for new hires who can walk into a situation, know how to understand the client needs, and deliver on the geospatial products. Therefore, it is essential for students to have a well-rounded GIS education and familiarity with spatial statistics, geographic concepts, cartography, database management, GIS software training, and project management. A geographic information system (GIS) integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information. It lets one to view, understand, question, interpret, and visualize data in many

ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. It is one of the most widely-used technologies across the globe. Recent studies have pointed out that GIS occupations will be in high demand in the next 10 years, while recruiting Web sites indicate GIS specialists can earn an annual salary up to $70,000. And students who know more than just the essentials of GIS software will obviously be of huge demand. Keeping that in mind, the American Sentinel University claimed that it is one of the few higher education institutions to offer two dedicated undergraduate GIS degrees, not just certificates. The university stresses on the importance to learn fundamental business and information technology skills and the specifics of geographic information systems. Dempsey frequently assesses the GIS job market and in her interview to the American Sentinel University shared her thoughts about what skills employers are looking for and how students can enhance their resume while still in school and more. Officials with the American Sentinel University remarked that they help students discover the meaning and role of GIS in their lives. Every day there is something new that can be accomplished with GIS technology and its a continued learning process that becomes a necessity to stay competitive with professionals in this arena.

Go to link:>
http://education.tmcnet.com/topics/education/articles/209825-gis-technology-expertemphasizes-well-rounded-gis-education.htm

Books
Creative Cartography: Mapping the Invisible City
By Maria Popova Aug 16 2011, 11:59 AM ET

A book examines architects, designers, and other thinkers who have figured out how to visualize the urban experience Cities, maps and data visualization are frequent obsessions of mine, and the intersection of the three hits a sweet spot of the finest kind. But how did urbanism, cartography, and information visualization first come together, and where are they going as bedfellows? That's exactly what Nadia Amoroso explores in The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles -- an ambitious study of the invisible elements of the city, from demographics to traffic patterns to crime rate to environment, through "map-landscapes." With a foreword by iconic information architect and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, the book traces the work of pioneers across cartography, information design, urban planning, and other disciplines that have historically shaped our understanding of place and spatial relations, alongside bleeding-edge projects from contemporary innovators across data visualization, open-source mapping, and other facets of technology-empowered urbanism. "It's Man's Ability to Perceive, it's the MAP. It's also the map through time with the ease of quick time and computer graphics and morphing, changing one pattern with another. Time telling a story through a day, a week or a year. Time showing change, it's the transparency

of information combined with other information creating a third piece of information." Richard Saul Wurman

The Measure of All Things

ADLER Ken, 2002, The Measure of All Things The Seven-Year Odyssey that Transformed the World, ISBN0316859893, Publishers Little, Brown. Time Warner Books UK Tells the story of how science, revolutionary politics and the dream of a new economy converged to produce both the metric system and the first struggle over globalization.

Longitude
SOBEL Dava, 1996, Longitude, ISBN1857025490, Fourth Estate Limited The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time.

Mercator The Man Who Mapped the Planet

CRANE Nicholas, 2002, Mercator The Man Who Mapped the Planet, ISBN0297646656, Weidenfeld & Nicolson Mercator is a vivid biography of the man who created the first modern map of the world.

The Island of Lost Maps A True Story of Cartographic Crime

HARVEY Miles, 2001, The Island of Lost Maps A True Story of Cartographic Crime, ,ISBN029784234X, Weindenfeld & Nicolson

Off The Map

An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy
by Chellis Glendinning

Today's global economy is yesterday's empire. Imperialism in whatever guise is the same through time, penetrating every area of our lives, affecting whole cultures as well as the

deep core of individuals. And maps have been the tools of empire, defining the territory to be exploited. Off The Map is a unique exploration of globalization. Part history, part autobiography, and part fiction, it weaves together the history of the last 300 years of Western imperialism, the author's own story of sexual abuse in the 1950s, and a present-day horseback ride through the recently colonized Chicano world of New Mexico. The author takes us with her as she travels 'off the map' through the ancestral lands of her friend and traveling companion Snowflake Martinez, describing the Chicano people's struggle to survive the onslaught of a globalized world, and the ways in which that struggle has been replicated countless times. In a different voice, she reveals scenes from her childhood, her grandparents adorning themselves with artifacts symbolic of the British Empire, and her medical doctor father raping both her and her brother for twelve years. The political is deeply personal. And hope, according to Glendinning, resides in our creating new maps that chart worlds fashioned by love and respect for community, place and nature.

Go to link:>
http://www.newsociety.com/Books/O/Off-The-Map

Book Extracts
The Island of Lost Maps A True Story of Cartographic Crime
In December 1995 Gilbert Bland was chased from the Peabody Library of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, clutching four 232-year-old maps. He turned out to be one of the greatest map thieves in history. Miles Harvey has spent four years tracing Blands journey from middle class anonymity to dark criminality, attempting to understand what drove Bland to steal some of the rarest cartographic treasures in the world. Since men have drawn maps, others have stolen them. During the age of discovery, map theft literally changed the face of the earth. Columbus discovered America thanks, in part, to charts purloined by his brother from the Portuguese: Ferdinand Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe using classified Portuguese maps; Francis Drake shattered Spains hold of the Americas and made smooth passage to the East Indies with captured Spanish maps. Gilbert Bland mutilated the beautiful crafted work of world describers work which took years of painstaking drafting and printing simply with a razor blade and the sleight of his hand as he tried to sate his desire for the dark joys of appropriation.

The Measure of All Things The Seven-Year Odyssey that Transformed the World
In June 1792 in the dying days of the French monarchy two astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary quest. . Their mission was to measure the world, or at least that piece of the meridian arc which ran from Dunkerque, through Paris, to Barcelona. Their hope was that all the worlds peoples would henceforth use the globe as their common standard of measure. Their task was to establish this new measure the metre as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.

The metre would be eternal because it had been taken from the earth, which was itself eternal. And the metre would belong equally to all the people of the world, just as the earth belonged equally to them. . What neither advocates nor opponents of the metric system could have known is that a secret error lies at the heart of the metric system an error perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the metre. .. According to todays satellite surveys, the length of the meridian from the pole to the equator equals 10,002,290 metres. In other words, the metre calculated by Delambre and Mechain falls roughly 0.2 millimetres short, or about the thickness of two pages of a book. It may not seem like much, but it is enough to matter in high-precision science.

Rheinpanorama Map
Vertical Panorama: the Rhine and the Birth of Tourism
Frank Jacobs on August 23, 2011, 5:03 PM

'Tourism' - a word first appearing in print in 1822 - quickly turned professional, attested by the rapid spread during the 19th century of Hotel Bristol as a generic name for overnight accommodation for the weary tourist [1]. Tourism also produced a new type of cartography the tourist map. These were explicitly designed to be alluring, to include and reflect the leisurely enjoyment of travel. This map is a late example of an early type of tourist map, the so-called Rheinpanorama. It depicts, in overlapping sections, and embellished with postcard-like images of riverside attractions, the most popular stretch of what came to be known as the Romantic Rhine, from Bonn to Mainz. The lovingly detailed and beautifully illustrated foldout sections of this Rheinpanorama were bound in book-form and published in 1909. By then, this particular genre was almost a century old. The first Rheinpanorama was published in 1811 by Elisabeth von Adlerflycht, who used continuous parallel projection to lend a bird's-eye perspective to the course of the Rhine. The map proved a hit with the leisure traveller of the day, and really took off when steam ships started plying their trade on the Rhine about a decade later. Its elongated sections are reminiscent of the perpendicular perspective of a few historical antecedents, such as the Tabula Peutingeriana, a Roman road map; and John Ogilby's scroll maps, vertically detailing itineraries to and from London (see #405). A later example of this kind of riverine cartography are Harold Fisk's alluvial maps of the Mississippi Valley (see #208). As an unfolding tapestry of the Rhenish landscape, the Rheinpanorama maps are a visual delight. They are at once a lure towards, a guide to, and a souvenir of a river steeped in history, and shrouded in legend. They can be 'read' in either an upstream or a downstream direction. This first section starts at Cologne, nearest the river's outlet into the North Sea at Rotterdam.

To see the whole strip map go to link:>

http://bigthink.com/ideas/39872

A Good Map is Hard To Find

It's Worth the Trip: Exploring comes before technology for map makers
By JOSH CHRISTIE The Portland Press Herald August 21

"If geography is prose, maps are iconography." When film director Lennart Meri said those words, he was touching on something profound. Maps aren't static, nor do they exist in a vacuum. A map shows politics and history and culture -- far more than just distances between points. Hikers, traveling far from the roads Google Maps and MapQuest show via satellite, have an even greater reliance on trail maps. A good map is one of the best tethers a hiker can have to his or her actual place on the planet. As someone who has spent far too much time searching for trailheads based on web searches and secondhand directions, I can attest to the fact that a good map is hard to find. Though cartographers can get their hands on GIS data (a digital packet of info on transportation routes, elevations, natural features, contours, etc.) fairly easily, that's only the first step in creating a map.

Go to link:>
http://www.pressherald.com/life/outdoors/exploring-comes-before-technology-for-mapmakers_2011-08-21.html

Conferences
Asia Geospatial Forum 2011 Secretariat
Geospatial Convergence Paradigm for Future 17-19 October, 2011-08-16 Hotel Mulia Senayan, Jakarta, Indonesia Website: www.asiageospatialforum.org/ Email - info@asiageospatialforum.org

2011 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Intelligent Systems

(ICIS 2011) Call for Papers November 18-20, 2011 Guangzhou, China http://www.ieee-icis.org

spatial@gov(r) Conference
15 - 17 November 2011 National Convention Centre Canberra http://www.spatial.gov.au/ or http://www.cebit.com.au/2011/conferences/spatial-at-gov

The Surveying and Spatial Sciences Conference

November 21-25, 2011 Wellington, New Zealand. It is a joint conference hosted by the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors and the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute. Please register you interests at http://sssc2011.org

MODSIM 2011,
12-16 December, International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Perth, Australia,
mssanz.org.au/modsim2011

InterCarto-InterGIS 17
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF TERRITORIES: GIS THEORY AND PRACTICE

December 14-15, 2011 Belokurikha, Altai Krai (Russia) December 18-19, 2011 Denpasar, Bali (Indonesia) http://conf.nsc.ru/intercarto17.

India Geospatial Forum 2012

8 9 February, 2012 Three vertical conferences focusing on infrastructure (Geo-Infra), enterprise (GeoEnterprise) and e-governance (Geo-Gov) www.indiageospatialforum.org

The International Congress Geotunis 2012

Sixth Session 26th to 30th March 2012 Tunisia, The use and the applications of GIS, remote sensing and digital modeling in the field of environment and in the management of natural resources and hazards

Mercator Revisited Cartography in the Age of Discovery

25-28 April, 2012 International conference Sini-Niklaas, Belgium Contact: contact@mercatorconference2012.be www.mercatorconference2012.be

4th International Conference on Cartography and GIS

18-22 June, 2012 Albena - summer resort on Black Sea, Bulgaria.

Brisbane International Geospatial Forum 2012

8 - 10 July 'Global Connections through Mapping' Brisbane, Australia Hosted by Mapping Sciences Institute, Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Map Society and the International Map Trade Association. A combined Conference and Trade Show.

Show. Further information: (website) www.imtamaps.org ; (email) imtaaspac@chariot.net.au

The United Nations/Vietnam Workshop on Space Technology Applications for Socio-Economic Benefits Workshop
10 to 14 October 2011 Hanoi, Vietnam,. Office for Outer Space Affairs United Nations Office at Vienna Vienna International Centre P.O. BOX 500 A-1400 Vienna, AUSTRIA Phone: (+43 1) 26060- 4948 E-mail: unpsa@unvienna.org http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/SAP/act2011/Vietnam/index.html NOTE: If you are involved in a workshop, symposium or conference related to cartography please send me brief details for the newsletter.

Left Field Cartography

Scrunch Proof Maps

Rand McNally provides 20 US destinations with tearproof, waterproof maps. No folding necessary, just scrunch it up and place in appropriate place!

Go to link:>
http://wareagletravelers.blogspot.com/2011/04/scrunch-proof-maps.html

Crumpled City Maps

Unlike traditional paper maps which can be awkward to deal with, the Crumpled City Map can be easily crammed into your pocket, backpack or the carrying pouch provided. without having to worry about refolding it along the original creases. Moreover, the maps are printed on special technological material that makes them the lightest and most resistant maps on market, as well as 100% waterproof. The collection includes some of the most interesting cities on the globe. Each map provides details about a large part of the city, including streets, monuments, museums, art galleries and much more. Crumpled City maps include a sightseeing index and a list of unique "Soulsights".

Go to link:>
http://www.palomarweb.com/web/tienda/products/view/CrumpledCityMaps

A world history timeline chart

The HistioGraph depicts the rise and fall of nations, peoples and cultures from 1500 BCE to the present day. It charts nations in the form of rivers of time, giving perspective and understanding to how the flow of civilizations have shaped our world.

Go to link:>
http://histiograph.com/

Ingrid Dabringer Puts the Art in Cartography

15 August 2011

Canadian artist Ingrid Dabringer has recently come to our attention for her map paintings, in which she reinterprets the vagaries of plate tectonics as portraits and dancers with a vaguely fauvist flavor.

Go to link:>
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/ingrid_dabringer_puts_the_art_in_cartography_2 0222.asp

NearMap Revisited
NearMap has uploaded new aerial images and allows users to see property from five different angles.

Go to link:>
www.nearmap.com.au