The ‘River Sins’ of Fantasy Maps

Author K. M. Alexander has some thoughts about rivers on fantasy maps, and the mistakes authors make with rivers when drawing those maps.

When it comes to rivers, I’ve noticed that quite a few fantasy writers don’t understand the basics. While their intent is noble, I’ve seen plenty of examples of authors struggling with the underlying science of rivers and river systems. I sympathize. These are mistakes I have made myself. Early on, in one of my first projects, I made a mess with the waterways in my fantasy world. Mistakes like these—I like to jokingly call them “river sins”—might go unnoticed at first, but when they are noticed, they can draw a reader out of the story or setting. It wasn’t until I later learned more about the behavior of these ecosystems that I was able to hone in on my worldbuilding, and the end result was something much more interesting and complex. The cool got cooler.

Previously: ‘The Perplexing River Systems of Middle-earth’.

All Mapped Out

Book cover: All Mapped OutCultural geographer Mike Duggan’s 2017 Ph.D. thesis was an ethnographic study of digital mapping practices in everyday life. His new book, All Mapped Out (Reaktion, 1 Feb 20241) “is an exploration of how maps impact our lives on social and cultural levels.” He explains a bit about what this means in a recent article in The Conversation.

Maps and what we do with them cannot be defined universally. Ideals and ideas about maps frequently clash with the reality of how and why maps are used. By bringing together my own research studying map users in London, and the work of others who have researched mapping practices around the world, I want to show how uses of maps are shaped by different cultures, communities, contexts and technology. […]

In my work there are several overlapping themes that chart how maps have become tied to culture and society. I want to do more than identify maps that have changed the world, or lay out the history of maps and society. Instead, I want to show that all maps have the potential to change the world and shape society. It’s just a matter of where you look and whose world you are interested in.

Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

One Map to Rule Them All: Fantasy Map Design Elements in ArcGIS Pro

Screenshot of John Nelson's One Map to Rule Them All ArcGIS Pro map style to a map of the Mediterranean area.

John Nelson’s One Style to Rule Them All is an ArcGIS Pro map style that applies fantasy map design elements to real-world geographic data. It does something similar to his earlier (2018) map style, My Precious (described here) only differently and with fewer assets (and 1/60th the download size). John has examples and links to a four-part video tutorial at this ArcGIS Blog post.

Previously: Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS.

Deep Learning Applied to Satellite Imagery Reveals Untracked Ships

Maps showing registered and unregistered fishing vessels near Spain, Morocco, Sicily and Tunisia.
Excerpt from Fig. 2 of Paolo et al., “Satellite mapping reveals extensive industrial activity at sea,” Nature 625 (2024).

Speaking of AI-assisted global monitoring: researchers affiliated with Global Fishing Watch have revealed that the global fishing, transport and energy fleets are a lot bigger than expected. They were able to compare the locations of ships carrying AIS transponders with satellite imagery, to which deep learning was applied to classify ships. They conclude that something like three-quarters of industrial fishing vessels, and thirty percent of transport and energy vessels, go untracked. This isn’t necessarily so much about clandestine activity—in many regions ships, especially fishing boats, simply aren’t required to be tracked—but it can, among other things, reveal illegal fishing in protected areas. Results of the study were published in Nature last month. Global Fishing Watch also has an interactive map. [The Verge]

Google, EDF Partner to Build Map of Global Methane Emissions

Methane is a greenhouse gas, more powerful than CO2 but shorter-lived. Google is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund to map global methane emissions, much of which result from leaks from fossil fuel infrastructure and are undercounted. The EDF’s MethaneSAT satellite (itself a partnership between the EDF and New Zealand’s space agency) launches next month: it’ll measure methane emissions at high resolution. Google’s bringing to the party algorithms and AI, the latter to build a global map of oil and gas infrastructure.

Once we have this complete infrastructure map, we can overlay the MethaneSAT data that shows where methane is coming from. When the two maps are lined up, we can see how emissions correspond to specific infrastructure and obtain a far better understanding of the types of sources that generally contribute most to methane leaks. This information is incredibly valuable to anticipate and mitigate emissions in oil and gas infrastructure that is generally most susceptible to leaks.

More at The Verge.

Previously: Mapping Methane Emissions.

Heart-Shaped Maps

A Modern and Complete Map of the World by the Royal Mathematician Oronce Fine of the Dauphiné (1534). Library of Congress website.Today might be a good day to look at cordiform map projections—maps in the shape of a heart. This Geography Realm post (and related video) looks at the history of such projections, such as the Werner and Bonne, which first saw use in the 16th and 17th centuries. This Library of Congress blog post explores two maps that use the projection: a 1795 Ottoman Turkish map attributed to a Tunisian cartographer, and the 1534 map by Oronce Finé (pictured) that apparently inspired it.

Guidestar and GM’s Early Attempts at In-Car Navigation

The 1995 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight was the first production car in North America to be offered with an on-board navigation system, Guidestar. Car enthusiast website The Truth About Cars recently ran a six-part series on the road to that release, exploring General Motors’ earlier, experimental attempts at in-car navigation. The series starts with the very experimental, 1960s-era DAIR, which would have relied on in-road magnets; parts two, three and four of the series look at TravTek, a system combining (still-scrambled-for-civilian-use) GPS with road sensors that was tested on Oldsmobile rental cars in the Orlando, Florida area in the early 1990s. The series ends with a look at the background and development of the Guidestar system itself.

Vector Tiles Are Coming to OpenStreetMap

On the OpenStreetMap blog, an announcement that vector tiles will be coming to OSM later this year. This is a significant, if belated technical change: other map platforms moved to vector mapping years ago (Google announced the change in 2013). But there are reasons for the delay:

Vector tiles have become industry standard in interactive maps that, unlike openstreetmap.org, don’t get updated often, and where you can simply recalculate your whole database occasionally.

But the map displayed on openstreetmap.org are quite uniquely different! They get updated incrementally and constantly, a minute after you edit; it’s a critical part of the feedback loop to mappers—and how the author of this blog post got hooked in the first place. This is why we have to invest in our own vector tile software stack.

The switch to vector tiles, the post goes on to say, will enable all sorts of dynamic changes to the map: “3d maps, more efficient data mixing and matching and integration of other datasets, thematic styles, multilingual maps, different views for administrative boundaries, interactive points of interest, more accessible maps for vision-impaired users, and I’m sure many other ideas that no one has come up with yet.”

The Opposite of Cartographic Generalization

In the above video, the Ticket to Know YouTube channel looks at the idea of cartographic generalization—where a map at smaller scale must necessarily remove detail to preserve legibility, to the extent that cities with very large populations (like Baltimore, Guangzhou or Yokohama) get left off the map because they’re near even larger or more significant cities get left off the map. As well as its opposite: where tiny population centres get put on the map because they’re in empty spaces (which maps have always hated). His example is Alice Springs; mine would have been a Canadian Arctic settlement like Churchill, Manitoba, population 870, which tends to appear even on globes.

Satellite Imagery of the Eruption Near Grindavík

Satellite image of the smoke plume and lava flow from the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Grindavík, Iceland, taken on 8 Feb 2024 and processed by Marco Langbroek.

The Copernicus-2A satellite imaged the smoke plume and lava flow from the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Grindavík, Iceland yesterday; Marco Langbroek processed natural-colour and short-wave infrared imagery to achieve the above image, which he posted to Bluesky. [Kottke]

Previously: Earthquake Swarms and an Imminent Eruption in Iceland.

Discounted Map Books at the University of Chicago Press

The annual University of Chicago Press book sale is frequently hazardous to one’s bank account. This year’s is especially dangerous for map lovers: I count more than 20 cartographic titles with discounts varying between 29 and 76 percent (the PDF catalog shows the discount more clearly), including several I’ve previously reviewed (Picturing America, The Red Atlas, A History of America in 100 Maps, The Writer’s Map, Phantom Islands, Elsewhere). The fact that I already have most of these books—admittedly most as review copies—keeps me relatively safe (which is good: I’m still recovering from last year’s sale).

The NJ Transit App Is Apparently Terrible

The Verge’s Victoria Song moved from New York City to New Jersey and discovered the awfulness of the NJ Transit app.

Many of my friends who’d migrated to Jersey warned me about the NJ Transit app. It’s not good, they said. I didn’t take them too seriously. I was forged in the fires of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s continually broken website circa 2001. After a seven-year stint in Tokyo navigating the labyrinthian Tokyo subway and bus system, what public transit app could ever befuddle me?

Hubris is a bitch.

(It’s reportedly okay for trains; the bus—which is what she’s taking—seems to be Another Matter.)

Edney on Arno Peters

Matthew Edney has written a long blog post on Arno Peters and his map.

I’ve been struggling for months now on how to deal with Arno Peters and his world map. Every time I turn to the subject, I just get bogged down by the complexity of the scattered and multifaceted literature, by the insanity of much of Peters’ map work, and by the different responses to his work. […] After at least three tries to say something new, and floundering each time, I am presenting this blog entry simply as an attempt to organize the information about Peters in a way that makes sense to me, which is to say historically. Think of it as a long bibliographical essay based on what I have to hand (so not comprehensive, especially in the German-language literature). I’m not sure that it says anything necessarily new or significant. So please join me as I go through a series of cuts at Peters and his map work.

Google Maps Is Adding Generative AI

Uh-oh. Generative AI is coming to Google Maps. Google is using large-language models to give suggestions on where to go based on its vast horde of reviews, ratings and other contributor data. “Starting in the U.S., this early access experiment launches this week to select Local Guides, who are some of the most active and passionate members of the Maps community. Their insights and valuable feedback will help us shape this feature so we can bring it to everyone over time.” Other LLMs have a tendency to push out magnificently wrong answers; it’ll be interesting to see what results Google will get with this specific set of data. (The chances of spectacularity are not zero.)

Middle-earth in Braille

A photograph of a braille/tactile map of Middle-earthAmong the tactile and braille maps sold by Adaptations, the store run by San Francisco-based LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, is this bundle of braille/tactile maps of Middle-earth. “The maps have raised lines, textures, and braille. There are 7 maps of Middle Earth, each focusing on different features (regions, settlements, mountains, forests, rivers and bodies of water). There are also two detailed maps: the Shire and Mordor.”