Cartographic concerns

Since the best way to display spatial data is with a map, and since GIScience is all about spatial data, knowledge about cartography goes hand-in-hand with knowledge about GIS.  There are many sites concerned with cartography--such as this site on map projections and reference systems --so finding information on cartography is both easy and hard (which of those thousands of links is worth visiting?). This educational site provided by the Federal government provides information on some cartographic fundamentals.

For our purposes the section on cartographic communication presented by the Virtual Geography Department covers the fundamentals. If you review this material you will have a basic understanding of the main cartographic issues.  For more in-depth coverage there are many excellent cartography texts in the library which you can review. Here is a paper (pdf) that discusses issues around the need for GIS'ers to know cartographic principles. This excellent manual describes some principles that you should follow when creating a map (this publication has an Australian focus, so those elements that describe what map projection to use, etc., should be ignored when producing maps for other places). The excerpt on Map Layouts from Making Maps: A Visual Guide is also well worth reviewing. The Land Trust GIS division has produced a great (but brief) page on how to design a great map layout--I highly recommend that you view the maps on this site.

ColorBrewer, produced by Cynthia Brewer, is an online tool designed to help people select good color schemes for maps and other graphics, and it is worth reviewing before completing your labs and projects. You should also check out her page on Color Scheme Types and Combinations: Overview (click on a colour patch to open up a page showing a map produced using that colour scheme), and the TypeBrewer pages by Ben Sheesle are worth a visit as well. ESRI has developed a resource--the ESRI Mapping Center--that contains a wealth of useful hints, and guidelines. Listed below are some links to a set of presentations that ESRI produced that discuss the relation between map design and GIS.  These presentations are very informative (but the PDF files are rather large!):

• Advanced Cartographic Effects (in particular, methods to display DEMs, water features, vegetation)
• Creating Advanced Effects with ArcMap (in particular, hillshading, raster display, symbols)
• The ArcTool that can be used to create some of the advanced hillshading images.
• ArcMap Cartography: Map Composition and Layout (layers, templates, map elements)
• Data Modeling for Large Scale Maps (map design considerations for maps < 1:20,000)
• Modeling GIS Data for Mapmaking (making better maps by re-presenting GIS data)
• Hitchhikers Guide to Cartography (probably the best general overview)

Learning objectives

• To gain a perspective on maps and cartography;
• To become aware of key map design principles;
• To identify the many choices available when producing a map;
• To recognize how GIS facilitates visual communication.

Text: Chapter 12 Cartography and map production and Chapter 13 Geovisualization [Overheads: 1 per page; 3 per page]

Keywords: generalization (simplification, classification, induction, symbolization), categorical vs numeric classification, PGE's (Primary Graphic Elements: shape, hue, orientation, value, size, texture), visual hierarchy, dasymetric.