The Local Wikipedia

This is fun: Local Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you! Try it out @ https://edjefferson.com/localwiki/.

The Map Animator

This is awesome: https://mapanimator.baldinger.se/

Draw your route or drop in a GPX file, add signs and a camera move, and download it as an MP4 video, up to 4K, ready for your editor.

Ice Age Animations

These are really cool: visualization of the ice sheet(s) extend(s) across Europe during the last Ice Age. Notice the rising & lowering of sea level as well and its effect on land masses!

• Eiszeit-Europa
• IceMap

Can someone please make this for the Laurentide Ice Sheet?

Best Travel Weather

Here are some tools to help you decide when to travel & where as a function of the 'best' weather & climate:

• https://pack-lightly.com/tool/best-travel-time-worldmap/
• https://seasonmap.app/map

EDEN

EDEN = Extension Disaster Education Network

Could be useful in case we as GPS go into this direction.

SLR Map

Nothing new here, but a nice interface & an option for an image export - nice! The steps are 2 m, 10 m, 30 m, and 70 m - would be nice to offer more options such as 1/3/5 meters and/or specific ones, especially for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Explore here: Simulate Coastlines After Sea Level Rise

Flow Maps

Flow Maps are cool, but really tricky to actually design & make look good. Here are two good resources:

• Flow Maps (by Esri) shows some hacks in ArcGIS Pro & ArcGIS Online that can be used to make flow maps.
• Flow Mapping (by PennState) is a great overview & introduction.

An American Mosaic

Coool interactive web map by the NYT: An American Mosaic

There is an article to go along, but that's behind the NYT paywall.

Svalbard: Fossil Fuels, Geopolitics & Science

Good article here: Feeling a chill

Basically, Svalbard finds itself at the center 21st century geopolitics 'cloaked' as science between the USA, Europe, Russia, China, India. etc.

Urban Plannning & Washington DC

Great scrolly map from the NYT for our history & urban planning nerds: Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries

The 3-30-300 'Rule'

Cool stuff over on Maps Mania: The 3-30-300 Rule for urban trees & interactive mapping tool. Read more about this rule or goal @ https://www.330300rule.com/.

Reality Mapping vs Digital Twins

This Esri article sounds like a lot of marketing word salad, but the animated GIF is cool!

Recent Land Use Changes: USA

This is interesting: A Shift in What’s Shaping U.S. Landscapes

The three main types of land use changes are urban sprawl, logging, and agriculture & here the New England has remained pretty stable over the last 40+ years or so. Why? The main land use changes had already occurred by 1988.

Your Name in Landsat!

Silly, but fun: Your Name in Landsat

Maybe even a good way to explore landforms in a Physical Geography class!

Outdoor Recreation Data

Great data, great data viz, great interactive maps, and all the data are free to download as CSV files: Outdoor Recreation Data

USA Surficial Geology

Verty cool new map from the USGS: Cooperative National Geologic Map: Earth's Surface geology (ArcGIS Online). Or, get it from the USGS.

The Cost Of Living

Excellent data set & web map from the Economic Policy Institute: The Family Budget Map. This map shows (by county) the cost-of-living for a 'normal' two-parent, two-child family broken down into housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes, and other necessities.

Even better: the data are accessible as MS Excel!

Our Demographic Future

In the 20 century: the demographic transition theory.

Here, countries transitioned from high fertility/mortality to low fertility/mortality due to modernization and development such as female empowerment, access to health care, and more.

Today: most countries are past this transition and in many countries fertility has fallen below replacement levels (which is about two children / woman). This applies to about 5.8 billion people and include countries such as Brazil, India, China, and more - these countries are already experiencing population decline. Fertility is still very high in sub-Saharan Africa & this will drive global population growth for many more decades.

Now, the main factors in population dynamics are a) migration and b) longevity. This means that in high-income countries immigration is and will be the main driver of population growth & that is ultimately what is behind the rise of MAGA & other types of nationalism / populism that we see.

Plus the so-called second demographic transition that is playing out in wealthy countries: fewer children = lower fertility due to rising individualism, new models of partnerships, and gender equality.

More details @ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aed1652

The Romans Google Maps!

This is really cool: a high-resolution digital map allows people to plan their routes along the ancient roads of the Roman Empire.

• Summary in Nature
• De Soto, P., Pažout, A.,Brughmans, T. et al. (2025) Itiner-e: a high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire. Nature Scientific Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06140-z
• https://itiner-e.org/

Google Alpha Earth

Google Alpha Earth is a new geospatial AI model that acts as a virtual satellite: it assimilates all kinds of geospatial data & does the processing for you. Then, you just ask & get ready-to-use AI-generated 'maps' of whatever you want. No more working with dozens of raw datasets!

Example: glacier mapping. In thed old days you would have spent considerable time finding useful cloud-free images, do some kind of processing, and then run some kind of index or band-ratio calculations. Now you can just ask: give me the size of the Humboldt Glacier over the last 10 years.

For now the focus seems to be on physical data collected by sensors, but I would assume that human data from will be included in the future.

More here: AlphaEarth Foundations helps map our planet in unprecedented detail