Sara's Geography Blog

GMU International Students

2009-11-16T14:19:00.001-08:00

FINAL PROJECT

2009-05-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

This is my final project. The task was to map the known prehistoric monuments in Scotland. Not easy for many reasons:

- the monuments are known by many names, many in Gaelic so looking up information on them in daunting and takes forever

- very few of them are well documented, most sources just list speculations and measurments

- The British don't seem to be in a hurry to excavate these, after all, they've been standing there for thousands of year

- prehistoric = no written history so speculations are all there is

Mapping these monuments was not horribly difficult. I spent (too) much time on the visual side of the map and did not pay attention to what I was doing. So I had to go back and change the buttons after making them bright red the first time, now they look much better (thanks for the suggestion Professor Hallden!!). In the end I had some extra time so I added some labels for the oceans etc. Overall I'm happy the way this turned out and would like to research more into these monuments.

Boxing Day Tsunami (Lab 10)

2009-04-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

This lab shows the devastation of the tsunami produced by a big earthquake in December, 2004. Almost a quarter of a million people were killed.. One of these satellite images were taken in June 23, 2004 and the other, following the tsunami, in December 28, 2004. The lab itself was interesting, Photoshop is a great tool.

Cartogram

2009-04-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

I LOVE this cartogram. The shapes of countries respresent the amount of internet users in the world. What I really like about it is how they used country flags inside the countries. The map is visually very nice!

Lab 9

2009-04-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

Here is my Lab #9. Why on earth is Sandy Creek parking lot located in Boulder, Colorado? :-D I really have no idea how it ended up there and there didn't seem to be a way to move it around either.

This was a fun lab, the drawing part was easy and I can see how it could get really challenging if you were to draw something in more detail.

Lab 8

2009-04-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here is my lab8. It was fun to make! I especially liked the last part where you could overlay a map over the globe.

Presentation: Hillshading and Draping

2009-03-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Hillshading and draping are tools that take a map to a whole new level. Hillshading makes the map look three dimensional and can be useful when identifying certain objects, such as river valleys and lowland areas, on a map. Draping means literally draping an image, such as a satellite image, over a terrain. Here are some examples of both tools.

This is a nice example of hillshading of the San Francisco Bay Area. If you look at a regular map of the same area, you might wonder why the bigger population centers are located in certain places. But when you see this map, you can tell how the topographic setting of the area affects where towns are located at. If you zoom close enough, you can tell that major roads are located in either valleys or on relatively flat ground.

This example map of Mile Creek Natural Area in Ithaca, New York shows a hillshaded map from an interesting angle. Digital raster graphics are combined with hillshading based on DEM. It is nice to see the effect of the contour lines, how the cartographer didn't get rid of them but chose to keep them in the map.

Here is a nice black and white map of the Easter Island from the Australian National University. This shows how effective hillshading can be even without the use of color.

This is a geological map draped over a topographic map. Combining geological data with the elevation makes sense since you can distinguish the different geological "categories" (sorry, I have no background in geology) and where they are located in the topographical setting.

A satellite image, such as Landsat image in this map can be draped over a digital elevation model. The nice thing about this map is that the way it is displayed, it looks more three dimensional than draping the same image over a "flat" map.

My last example is perhaps the most dramatic one of what draping can do. This is another Landsat image draped over a topographic map (from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission). It displays a part of Southern California. This map is perhaps the most life-like and illustrates the difference between elevations.

Lab 7

2009-03-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Whew!! Operation Barbarossa finished. Was it a success? Not for the Germans but for the one Finn who wanted to map it - YES!! What I really like about my map is:

1) it's DONE!!

2) the pop-ups are pretty neat and (in my opinion) easy to read

3) the colors are nice, although I haven't taken the time to figure out how to post the map without the browser background changing as well

4) the basemap is nice, it took forever to do but I'm very happy with the result!

5) did I mention it's DONE?? Well it is! And I cannot believe it!

Sure there are some things that are not so perfect but who cares. I'll try to work on the shape tween a bit when I have the time (?!?) and there is a tiny shift in the basemap in the last frame I couldn't quite figure out how to fix. Oh details..

"Drawing" this map gave me some ideas for my final project. I wasn't sure how to do this one thing but figured it out and now I know how to take it a step or two further in the final project.

Wild fire progression in San Diego

2009-03-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

This was a pretty neat map I found on the internet. Not the first one on the page, you'll have to scroll down to the other ones. The maps are 3D and I think they've done a great job showing the terrain of the area and how the fires spread. The maps have lots of potential (it would be great if the user could control the timeline, for example).

Lab5.. Take two

2009-03-18T21:00:00.001-07:00

So I know we're supposed to post lab 6 by now but surprise! I'm still in lab 5. Had some major difficulties with the buttons and wasn't paying enough attention so the map shifts a little in the last frame of the movie. But anyway, this is it so far.

The buttons still don't work like they're supposed to. What's really weird is that you can only choose the date buttons (such as August25) when the movie is stopped in the beginning and not while the movie is playing.

I've been working on this map on a 20" screen and when I'm trying to load it up on a 17" screen it is just too big. :(

Something positive about the map? I actually like the basemap. It took a loooong time to "re-draw" all the country boundaries and I wish I had changed it to represent what Europe looked like in 1941. I like my caret and I think the flags are good representations of German troops.

Off to lab #6..

lab5..

2009-03-04T19:38:00.000-08:00

Yikes. Something is wrong with my timeline. So I ended up doing only one army unit for now to because I think it moves waaaaaay too slow. I used 10 frames to represent a day. Anyway, here is my "lab" or what I've done so far. No controls or timeline, just a box moving across the screen. I want to change the symbols to tanks (for the tank units) and really get the timeline right. Sorry for the horrible lab, I'll work on it during the break.

Immigration to the United States Map

2009-02-25T18:33:00.000-08:00

I found this map interesting. In a way it works like the map we did this week, although the checkboxes are a bit different.

Lab #4

2009-02-23T10:28:00.001-08:00

Here is my fourth lab. It was fun but long. I don't quite like the fact that when it first loads up, you have to uncheck all the boxes to get an empty map. And I can't figure out what I did wrong! Overall this lab took a long time to do and was sometimes pretty frustrating.

I chose Republican party and wanted to do a more historical map for a learning experience.

GMU interactive map

2009-02-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

I really like this map of the Fairfax campus. It has made my life so much easier this semester! The red color is very effective on the otherwise green map and it's nice that you can click on most of the buildings. They even put the clock and the George Mason statue in there!

Lab #3

2009-02-16T07:15:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! This LAB is finished already and I'm pretty happy with it! Downloaded the 30-day trial from Adobe so I was finally able to work on this from home. Changed the colors and fixed some weird things from the previous version. Used only one sound for all the functions, the beep was my favorite. This lab was actually fun! And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I finally figured out how to use Flash.. That helped quite a bit! Though I'm still figuring out the drawing stuff, I learned how to have round edges on a box but then couldn't do it again. Hmm.. Anyway, I think I'm missing a game but noticed that only in the end. Another great side to this lab? Now I know something (just a teeny tiny bit) about football.

Lab#2

2009-02-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

So here is my second lab. I ran out of time (as always) so the graphics stink. Figuring out how to use Flash and add buttons etc. took so long that I did not have time to concentrate on the colors and other visuals. Oh well, at least it works! I had an extra timeframe in the end so I ended up doing "the end". Could've just deleted it but... Uploading to my mason web page was easy once I located the password I used for uploading stuff a year ago. Maybe I'll work on this some more if I ever find the time.

Simple Map Animation

2009-02-04T19:33:00.000-08:00

I found this simple map animation online. It keep replaying itself and is very simple in its graphics. I guess it would be more like a flip book. The idea is interesting and could be developed into a more complicated animation.

Lab #1

2009-01-29T09:39:00.001-08:00

Here is my first lab! It's a map of the 2008 presidentail election results. I like the colors but am wondering why the red looks so blurry. It looked fine in Flash! So far I'm liking Flash as a program, it looks like there are many new things to learn!

New Semester!!

2009-01-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

I found this interactive map of the 2009 inauguration interesting (you might have to scroll down the page a little bit to see it). It displays the Mall area of DC, showing the parade route and different events. You can choose what information is displayed by clicking on icons. You can also zoom in and out of the map.

Final Project

2008-12-09T13:37:00.001-08:00

So here is the final project for this class! As the title suggests, I mapped USDA certified organic livestock in the United States. The data is from 2005, the most recent year it was collected.

This map is a bivariate map where two groups were mapped; beef and poultry. You can see how most of the southern states in SE have very little certified livestock, in fact most of them have none at all. The same applies to SW part of the country, not including California. There is definitely a concentration of organic livestock in California and the Pacific Northwest, Texas and around the Great Lakes. States such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Kansas have large numbers of organic poultry but not that much organic beef production.

The map was more difficult to make than I had imagined. The bivariate color scheme was tricky and the data was very scattered having many extremely low values and on the other hand some very high values. The USDA logo could only be found online with a white box around it so I had to draw it myself. The type isn't the exact same used in the official logo but it is close enough.

Final Lab

2008-11-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

So this was the final lab. I had some problems with Illustrator, for some reason the stuff I did in CS2 in the geography lab wouldn't work with my CS version. Couldn't select anything from the imported file.. So, I had to do the whole lab twice! Luckily I had my data ready but it still took a looong time. I think this lab turned out the best of all labs, I like the colors (not like the last disaster lab) and overall the map looks better. Sorry that this is a day late!!

Color!!

2008-11-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

Finally a color map!! I think the colors look ok, though the printed version seems a bit sharper in quality. I would probably pick another background though, the text (numbers) is difficult to read with a bright red background.

Proportional Symbol Map

2008-11-04T06:37:00.001-08:00

Missing California this week.. So here's a proportional symbol map which I found here.

Moo Moo!!

2008-11-04T06:35:00.001-08:00

Choropleth map

2008-10-28T14:25:00.001-07:00

This was an intersting assignment. It was difficult to make the map visually pleasing but it turned out okay. I didn't want to add greytone inside the neatline, I think it looks better with white background.

Irish in West Virginia

2008-10-21T11:22:00.001-07:00

This was a fun but time consuming lab. The orientation of the dots could be better but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Dots

2008-10-19T18:50:00.001-07:00

This is an interesting dot density map downloaded from here.

Counties of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia

2008-10-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

Clear typography

2008-09-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

I liked the typography used in this map of the Antarctica. It's very sharp and easy to read.

Lab 4: Typography

2008-09-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

I loved this lab! Lots of detailed work and it didn't turn out perfect but it was so much fun. :-D Some of the letters are a bit crooked but I'm pretty happy with the final map. Does someone actually get to do this stuff for a living?

Mollweide Graticule

2008-09-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

Lab #3 was about drawing a Mollweide projection. Not too difficult to do although required some simple math to determine the grid size. Scale is 1:157,776,200 (i.e. 1 inch on the map represents 157,776,200 inches in real life).

Avebury stone circles

2008-09-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

This week's map is a bit different, a local map of a stone circle in the U.K. Pretty neat! The map was downloaded from here.

Lab#2

2008-09-16T13:55:00.001-07:00

Map of SW Finland, Aland etc. from 1751

2008-09-14T17:25:00.001-07:00

I chose this map as my "map of the week" because I'm fascinated with old maps. It's interesting to think how much work went into mapmaking back then (this one is 250+ years old). In this map the shape of the part of Finland shown isn't really correct but the islands off Turku coast and Aland are very detailed. On most modern maps you cannot see the islands in this detail.

Three geography links

2008-09-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

Google Earth is a wonderful tool for exploring Earth. You can see areas in detail and zoom in quite close to pretty much anywhere, this free program guarantees hours upon hours of educational fun. Google Earth works on the Mac too, yay!

GNIS which is short for Geographic Names Information System, is great for looking up data on different locations, names and other information like elevation. Just type in a name of a place (ie. Fairfax) and you get numerous results. You can define your search narrowing down the results as well. It is interesting to see that there are many places in the United States with the same name and you can find lots of places not found in a regular map.

Measurement conversion factors is an easy stop for all the assignments that require you to convert from the english system to the metric system and so on. The web site is very simple and nothing fancy but includes lots of information.