National Parks: Crowds & Climate

This is a very cool analysis: what's the best time of the year to visit a given US national park if you want to balance crowds & weather? Sure, there are hardly any crowds in Glacier National Park in January, but you are in the middle of winter. Likewise, J-Tree is pretty empty in July, but can you deal with the heat?

Explore it all here: How to See the Most Popular US National Parks, Without the Crowds

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/.

Cartokit

Cartokit is a direct manipulation programming environment for interactive cartography on the web. Vey cool! See more over on GitHub: https://github.com/parkerziegler/cartokit

Landsat Surface Temperature

This seems cool, but I have no idea what to do with it: Landsat Surface Temperature Web Mapping Application and Data. Joe Kerski has some ideas here.

PaintMyMap

From the website: PaintMyMap.com is an online custom map maker that lets you create, style, and export beautiful maps in minutes. Choose a world, continent, or country map—or upload your own data (GeoJSON, TopoJSON, Shapefiles, KML, CSV)—then paint regions, add labels and a legend, and export a high‑quality image or PDF.

Might be useful?

Climate Trace

Incredible data & visualization from Climate TRACE!

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

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.

Backcountry Skiing

Here are two excellent interactive web maps: one showing the backcountry ski options around Mount Mansfield, the other in the White Mountains:

• Mount Mansfield Backcountry
• White Mountains Backcountry

I have never heard of that app (Backtrack Maps) - let's hope it stays around!

The Earthporn Map

Unfortunate name, but there is nothing 'porn' about it - just a map of the r/EarthPorn is a subreddit: The Earthporn Map. Could be a useful tool to plan your next vacation!

The Milky Way Map

This is apparently the largest map of the Milky Way: https://archive.eso.org/scienceportal/home. Very cool, but I'm not sure what anyone can do with this...here's a little more beta from Joe Kerski.

Mapping YouTube Videos with AI

Good stuff here on Maps Mania: Automatically Mapping YouTube Videos

• Using allStara
• Using deepseek

Backcountry Ski Routes in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire

Well-done in CalTopo: https://caltopo.com/m/4U821FC

This would be great as a Story Map with linked / embedded pics & videos. More beta in his video:

The Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas

The Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas is awesome - have a look! You can display measurements, reanalysis, and model data at all kinds of geographies & time scales. And: download the data in a bunch of formats.

It is just too much...nobody will use it. Expert scientists will access the data directly and the general public will scared off by the complexity. This is really designed for the rare 'regular' person who is interested & competent enough to figure-out the tool.

Suggestion: Make a simplified version or walk-through video.

Let's Eat!

America’s Chain and Independent Restaurants maps out all restaurents across the USA coded by their degree of 'chainness' from the 310,000 or so single-location restaurants to the 24,333 Subways. Now if they only would make the underlying restauranr address data available!

More @ https://friendlycities.gatech.edu/data-interactive/

Overture Maps Explorer (Beta)

I really don't know much about it, but the Overture Maps Explorer (Beta) apparently lets you zoom-into any location on Earth & then download a bunch of map data.

More over @ Maps Mania: Free Map Data Grabbers

The John Snow Map

The first 'modern' map perhaps, depicting the spatial relationship between cholera cases & drinking water supply in 1854 in London. Here are two great ways to explore it:

• Interactive Web App
• Great zoomable version

The interactive web app is nice, but also an example of how much more data viz and data storytelling you can do with an Esri Story Map.

2050 Ecosystems Projections

From Esri: We have developed a set of global layers at 1 km resolution for projections of terrestrial ecosystems in 2050 and compared them to today’s ecosystems to learn what could change.

Have a look @ https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/announcements/2050-projections-of-world-terrestrial-ecosystems-are-now-available/.

The National Risk Map (by FEMA)

This web map is great @ https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/map

• Show the different types of risks and their associated costs.
• Show by country or by census tract.
• Show vulerabilty & resilience.
• Nice data download option @ https://hazards.fema.gov/nri/data-resources

But, FEMA - please: your color ramps are terrible!

Hurricanes & You

Here are two nice web apps to explore hurricanes that impacted your particular area:

• Hurricanes that passed near me
• NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks

A little odd: Hurricanes Diane & Connie (August 1955) seem to be missing for my area here in Western MA & northern CT?