Every River in the USA

This one is making the rounds on the net: a map showing every river in the United States (see image below).

• Read about it here
• Explore the details on GitHub
• Explore the live version (it gets better as you zoom-in!)

Even better! Make your own U.S. Rivers or U.S Roads maps!

The World of Airport Runways

This is a different way to 'see' the world: a map of all 45,000+ places to land an aircraft based on the data from www.ourairports.com.

• Airports of the World (by James Davenport)

Data and Visualization Resources

This is a great compilation of tools and methods for data processing and visualization:

• Data and Visualization Resources (by Lena Groeger) 

We Have A Plan!

Well, here it is: the long-awaited climate action plan by the Obama administration.

• The President's Climate Action Plan (June 2013)
• President Obama's Climate Policy Speech (25 June 2013)
• White House Fact Sheet
• Commentary by Andy Revkin on Dot Earth

Mapping Cities

These are not traditional maps - rather diagrams or 'fingerprints' of cities showing 8 (!) variables. Now you can start comparing and grouping cities - why do cities look the way they do?

• The Urban Story

Plane Finder

This is almost silly (or scary?): Plane Finder - have a look yourself (also available in 3D for smart gizmos).
For fun: try Plane Finder Airport and Flight Routes (looks like huge missile launch).

2013 Wild Fire Season

Esri created a nice real-time interactive map of wild fire activity across the U.S. I especially like the included wind vectors (although how about a better color!).

Inequality Is

This is a great example of an animated infographic. Click the link at the bottom to see and hear an explanation by Robert Reich.

• Inequality.Is

The Atlas of True Names

Via Slate:



More Information: The Atlas of True Names

Drugs and the US/Mexico Border

This is a great interactive web map from the Center of Investigative Reporting showing drug seizures along the U.S./Mexican border as a function of time and/or drug type. Then enjoy the related 'infographic!

• Drug Seizures along the US/Mexico border
• Infographic: All Your Pot Are Belong to Us

The National Map Corps

Get involved!

• National Map Corps website
• USGS press release (19 June 2013)

360 Degree View

The whole thing is too commercial, too sensationalized, and maybe a tad voyeuristic (will he fall and die...), but the 360 degree panoramic view is pretty cool.

Esri: Drive-Time Buffers and Viewshed Analysis

This is nothing radical, but a nice way to very quickly demonstrate what we can do with network analysis or a digital elevation model = a good entry point to then explore the actual data, underlying tools, and sophisticated analysis functions in ArcGIS.

• Teaching Spatial Concepts with Drive-Time Buffers
• Teaching Spatial Concepts with Viewsheds

Open Data Globe

Open Data Globe maps available (and sometimes live) mobility data to map the dynamics of selected European cities in 2-D or 3-D. This is not quite ready for prime time yet...there are only a few cities available, the data are really interactive, and the whole thing feels more like a sandbox than a production product. Still - this is where the field is headed!

Landsat 8 and Open-Source Tools

Okay - if you are really interested and enjoy using command-line UNIX - here's a tutorial on how to process Landsat 8 imagery (or any other satellite images) using open-source tools and create interactive web maps with TileMill and MapBox.

• Processing Landsat 8 Using Open-Source Tools

360 Degree Panorama of Mars!

This is amazing: Billion-Pixel View From Curiosity at Rocknest (by NASA/JPL)

The Geography of Twitter (II)

Tweets mapped as a function of Local vs. Tourist, device OS, and tweet language. Two things are obvious to me: English is (still) the dominant tweet-language and the iPhone (still) rules the US. Have a look yourself!

• Mapping Travel, Languages & Mobile OS Usage with Twitter Data

The Geography of Facebook Friends

Mapping the World's Friendships (on Facebook) tells fascinating stories about human history, economic activities, immigration, and more: who's friends with whom?

Web Mapping

I stumbled across two more options for simple web mapping - these are interesting as they run entirely inside your browser (= no special software to download and install).

• indiemapper
• GeoCommons (requires free sign-up)

The Growth of Walmart and Sam's Club

Not much more to say...well done by FlowingData!

What's in the News?

So there is the basic Google News - stories are grouped by similar content. Then there is Newsmap that takes the Google News content and maps it by popularity where the size of the tile is determined by the number of related articles. Weird - but instructive as it gives a glance at what people seem to care about.

• Traditional Google News
• Newsmap

What is a Ph.D. anyways?

This is great - the illustrated guide to a Ph.D. - but also applicable to any kind of specialized work or knowledge - don't forget the big picture!

• Matt Might: The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

Mapping Time

So we are quite used now to mapping space - that's what GIS is all about. But, how can we visualize timelines? Try TimeFlow Analytical Timeline!

• More information at HINT.FM

A History of the World (from Wikipedia)

This is incredible: a version of our history as told by geotagged Wikipedia articles! There is obviously a strong spatial bias in the Wikipedia content - that's perhaps the main message here.

• A history of the world in 100 seconds

A History of the World in 100 Seconds from Gareth Lloyd on Vimeo.

Mapping Dating Profiles

Roger Luke DuBois mapped words used in dating profiles across U.S. Congressional Districts. There are also state and city maps where he changed the name with the word that was most characteristic for that particular geographic region.

• A More Perfect Union

The Quantified Self

= use technology to collect data about one’s own activities and habits – ideally in real-time. Here are three examples:

• Atlas Of The Habitual
• Nicolas Feltron Annual Reports
• Aaron Parecki GPS Visualization

NYC Flood Zones

Here is a nice interactive 3D comparison between the 2007 flood zones, Hurricane Sandy storm surge, and the now updated 2013 FEMA flood zones. Recall that Sandy and its associated flooding was almost perfectly predicted.

• 2007/2013 Flood zones and Sandy surge
• Sandy: Predicted vs. actual flooding

Tornado Travel Directions

John Nelson is at it again. First he created great maps and animations of tornado tracks between 1950 and 2011. Now he has expanded his analysis to determine the preferred travel directions of tornodoes.

• Tornado Tracks
• Tornado Travel Directions

While at it: have a look at his earthquake, fire, and hurricane analysis!

Tornado Travel Directions

State of OpenStreetMap

This I found over on FlowingData - the 2013 OpenStreetMap Data Report. The visuals are amazing! Scroll down all the way to watch updates happening in real-time! Speaking of OSM: have a look at this talk to learn more about gender and regional biases in OSM.

Map Stack

I'm not entirely sure what this is...it seems to be a web-based tool to create maps without coding or learning a specialized software such as ArcGIS. Map Stack is brought to us by Stamen Design so we know that the graphics will be stunning. What is not clear to me how you can add your own data - give it a try!

More information from good.is

Pathbrite

ePortfolios are becoming more and more common these days as a way for students to compile and present evidence of their learning and understanding - be that in a given course or for an entire 4-year degree program. On the other hand, many college course nowadays use some type of course management system (CMS) that is only accessible to the student and the instructor. Pathbrite is an attempt to combine a CMS with an ePortfolio that students can use (after college) to share their 'career readiness' with potential employers.

That all makes good sense - Pathbrite is free for instructors and $10 for students (per year). And that's the problem: is it reasonable to 'force' students to spend an additional $40?

Maptorian

Well - you can actually make great maps without a GIS! That's nothing new and in-fact GIS maps are often exported into a vector-based graphic design software such as Adobe Illustrator for the final touches needed to create a publication-quality map.

Maptorian ($29) offers fully-editable vector maps in 40 global layers for direct use in Adobe Illustrator - no GIS skills needed here! The disadvantage: all you get are vector graphics - no geographic references.

Still, this may be useful for some, especially when combined with the excellent free and open-source vector-based graphic design software Inkscape (a nice alternative to Adobe Illustrator).

Mapping Antarctica

Mapping the surface of a continent - any continent - is difficult enough. Mapping the surface of Antarctica is even more challenging. But, what lies beneath the 2 miles of ice covering this continent? NASA just released Bedmap2 - an updated version of the topography that lies underneath the Antarctic ice sheets. Watch the video for a nice 2-minute introduction!

• NASA Bedmap2

Map Projections

Map projections is something you either don't have to care about or you have care about a lot...there really is no middle ground anymore. Most of the time ArcGIS handles everything automatically and we don't have to know anything - magically things are properly georeferenced and aligned. Until you run into issues...things don't align, buffers are incorrect, and distances don't make sense. Here are two useful websites to learn more about map projections:

• Map Projections (by C.A. Furuti)
• A Gallery of Map Projections (by P.B. Anderson)

Boston Bus Travel

And why not? A live map of bus speed in Boston!

• Live MBTA bus speeds (by bostonography.com)

The Geography of Language

This is fun (and a great example of web-based statistical mapping): who says what and how across the US? Select from 122 questions and see the results mapped across the country.

• Dialect Survey Results

Have a look at POP vs SODA and participate in the survey!

The Geography of Beer and LGBT Rights

Two great examples of interactive web-based GIS maps that combine spatial and historical data in different ways.

• Mapping Beer (by the New Yorker). This is a pretty simple but interactive web map showing the growth of local beer across the US.
• 50 Years of Change maps the changing LGBT laws across the US with a great combination of  maps and timelines.

Pangea with modern political borders

Very fun: our most recent super-continent mapped with 21st-century geopolitical borders. The annotations are uninspiring, but discussions below are interesting and full of useful information.

• Pangea with modern political borders

Landsat 8 and the Humboldt Glacier (Venezuela)

Landsat 8 took its first image of the Humboldt Glacier = the sole remaining glacier in the Venezuelan Andes on 24 May 2013. This is not a great image due to the thin cloud cover, but still the shrinkage since my 2011 GPS survey (black line) is obvious.

The Geography of Twitter (I)

We have seen these maps before: The Geography of Tweets
Effectively these are just maps of points where someone tweeted = a proxy for population density, wealth, infrastructure, development, etc.