Midterm #1 Review Flashcards
Cartography
the art, science, and technology of making, using, and studying maps
Reference maps
focused on accurate description of landscape, no emphasis on any one feature (topographic maps)
Thematic maps
result of some spatial analysis, communicating spatial distribution of phenomena (ex. graph shows emphasis on vegetation type)
What is classified as a map?
communicating information regarding spatial data
Definition of a map according to Muehrcke, 1978
“A map is any geographical image of the environment”
Definition of a map according to Burough, 1987
“A map is a set of points, lines, and areas that are defined by their non-spatial attributes”
Babylonian world map
600 BC clay tablet, flat earth, 7 islands, parallel vertical lines are euphrates river, 8 cities (circles) surround Babylon
Ptolemy’s world map
first example of a projection map (lat-long coordinate system), 150 AD, influenced Islamic cartography through 15th century and European cartography towards the end of this period
Medieval Christianity (Europe)
biblical explanations of geography, 1300s AD T-O Mappaemundi, world depicted as a letter T (land masses Asia, Europe, Africa) within an O (worlds water/ oceans), used for dominance and power reasons
10th century Arabia
greek, persian, Indian geographical lore. Islamic tenets, Al Wardi’s (1457 AD) world map
Yo ji tu (12 century Asia)
functional and scientific methods, time of the compass, etched in stone then rubbed onto paper
- more focused on trade, governance, navigation
Age of Exploration: (15th to 16th century)
- interest maps spurred by European subjugation of new lands and ppl
- re-discovery of Ptolemy’s geography introduced projections to renaissance mapmakers
- new instruments + printing processes
- professional class of mapmakers began to emerge
Maps for colonization: late 16th to late 18th century
- increased use of maps by officials, soldiers, clergy, scientists, middle class merchants
- maps as tools of commerce and government, towards colonization
- expanded role of science in cartography
- continued role of visual arts in cartography
Mercator’s projection and direction
mercator’s projection does not preserve size or distance, it does preserve direction
Surveys and Thematic cartography, for the nation: late 18th to 19th century
- western mathematical style spreads throughout world = standardized techniques, symbols, projections, scales
- traditional cartography does continue, some hybrids
- thematic cartography: distributions of phenomena
More maps for more people: 20th century
- maps readily available to general population
- new methods for data acquisition and printing (printing maps became cheaper, mass production)
- military fuels interest in maps and world geography (war)
Digital Mapping: 1970 - present
- daily imaging of earth’s surface
- global positioning system (GPS)
- PCs, internet, GIS (most maps created by non-cartographers), crowdsourcing
Global Positioning System (GPS)
current location, real-time updates, data may be and mined to create value-added apps
How can remote sensing instruments image the earth?
they can image the earth at various spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions:
- spatial: size of pixel
- temporal: how often does spacecraft pass?
- Spectral: wavelength of energy measured
Predictive policing
spatial analysis of arrest data to target policing activity
- potential ethical problems: arrest data is not crime data, arrest data is racialized/biased, history does not necessarily repeat itself
Key changes in maps over time
- REFERENCE mapping for baseline info and navigation, THEMATIC to learn about phenomena
- New tech (compass, computer) and new social org. (bureaucracies, divisions of labor)
- maps wield power for govs., militaries, BUT increasingly made/read by gen. pub.
GeoAI
- AI fused with geospatial data, science, and tech. for real world understanding
- ex. “foresters and landowners use GeoAI to give them knowledge about volumes and species of trees without a time-consuming on-site inspection”
Development of GIS: Historic use of multiple theme maps
- Series of base thematic maps to portray layers of data
- Mapping cholera in central London (1854)
→ Dr. John Snow - identified a contaminated well by mapping incidents of infection
→ early example of spatial analysis
First Law of Geography
Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things
- Waldo Tobler, 1970
Limitations to paper maps
- Difficult and expensive to store, retrieve and update
- Difficult to perform quantitative analysis
Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS)
- Produced stats to aid development of land management plans over large rural areas
- Major technical innovations: internet data structure, overlay and area measurements, scanner for map input
- Used in the 90s but could not compete with other vendors
What is a GIS?
1) A database: system in which most of the data are spatially indexed, and upon which a set of procedures can be operated in order to answer queries (Smith et al., 1987)
2) Tools: GIS is a powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving at will, transforming and displaying spatial data from the real world (Burrough, 1986)
3) People: An automated set of functions that provides professionals with advanced capabilities for the storage, retrieval, manipulation and display of geographically located data (Ozemoy et al., 1981)
Data models
set of rules and/or constructs used to describe and represent aspects of the real world in a computer
The vector data model
vector model can be outdated (tree falls), using lines for rivers does not explain how water flows there, do not know width/depth
Choropleth map
uses colour to show spatial distance of some phenomenon
Point numbers
are feature IDs that have coordinates
Polygons
will have closing coordinates (closed shape)
Topology
set of rules that model relationships between neighbouring points, lines, and polygons and determines how they share geometry
Dimensionality
- feature class: collections of geographic features
- graph structure: nodes (to and from points), faces (area), edges/arcs (borders)