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

The End of GIS: AI!

The AI Revolution is Coming for GIS: What You Need to Know About Microsoft’s Latest Warning is a pretty dire read...but you probably should add 5-10 years to this timeline. Here are a few take-home messages for me:

• The impact will be most-significant on the entry-level jobs.
• But, field work and basic project management will still be around for a while.
• Coding is still a key skill, but it will be all about AI-assisted coding in the very near future. But, you will need to have a good understanding of coding and how AI 'thinks' in-order to effectively prompt the AI.
• Take an online class in maschine learning for geospatial applications.
• Combine GIS expertise with complementary skills such as urban planning, environmental science, and more.

Historical Aerial Photos

Remember when air photos were a thing? Well, they still are! This place https://e-topo.com/mapv2.aspx offers the low-res 300 dpi versions for free somehow.

Climate Trace

Incredible data & visualization from Climate TRACE!

• Track Global Emission of air pollution.
• Pollution Plumes shows how they disperse from point sources.

The Correct Map

Notthing really new here, but a few nice resources:

1. The Correct World Map
2. The “correct” map
3. A cool scrolly-type story map: The true size of Africa
4. The Equal Earth Projection

TLDR? Here's the short version: It is mathematically impossible to transform the surface of a sphere on a 2D surface without distorting at-least one of these properties: 1) angles, 2) shapes, and 3) distances. These distortions are minor at large-scales (e.g. neighborhoods or cities), but considerable at small-scales (e.g. countries, continents, or wolrd). Catographic projections need to balance these distortions in-order to make the map as useful as possible for its intended purpose. Therefore, there is no such thing as a 'correct' map: every map is wrong, but there are well-established cartographic projections that are most-suitable for certain applications.

Projections & Distances

Geodesic or planar: which to use for distance analysis (by Esri) is a nice overview of the issue. Take-home message: use geodesic distances!

Two Different Story Maps

Here are two recent examples of story maps:

1. The Internet Infrastructure Map is maybe not a 'classic' story map as such, but does tell the story of the expansion of undersea cables & more that represents the infrastructure of the Internet.
2. Battles of the American Revolutionary War (by Esri) is a class Esri Story Map = a nice way to curate a lot of information across space & time. But...ultimately...not very compelling.