Lab 1 : Maps

1. Map of Indigenous Australia language groups

I find this map interesting for two reasons. Firstly, because it shows the designated boundaries of native Australian language communities (as established by Tindale in 1974), of which there are hundreds. Secondly, I find interesting the vast number of speakers of native Australian languages in the 1980s in certain regions. Moreover, this map pictorially represents Australia by regional languages rather than the six states — New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, and the two major mainland territories — the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) - which lends a different perspective for seeing a region; a perspective not typically offered by a political state map, which is most commonly the method of depiction. According to this map, about 25 areas have over 1000 speakers of a native language, and a few hundred areas have below 100 speakers or no speakers at all. The areas with the highest numbers of speakers are generally found in the center of Australia and the center-north. This is probably due to the hot, dry, desert-like climate of Central Australia, which was not as widely developed by Europeans as the Western and Eastern coasts. In seeing the native languages of Australia and their modern-day speakers mapped, it helps me to understand the link between the native Australian languages and the present-day linguistic make-up of Australia as a whole. Source: http://www.linguistics.unimelb.edu.au/thieberger/popmap.html, Google Image, accessed at 1:42pm on September 28, 2010.

2. Map of Cities with over 10,000 inhabitants in the Baltic Sea Region in 1998

This map shows cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants in the Baltic Sea Region in 1998. I find this map interesting because from studying it, we discover that the majority of cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants in this region are found in the southern part of the region. Far north and inland of Norway, Sweden and Finland, there are not many cities altogether, let alone large ones. This is probably due to the cold climate of the northern part of this region. It is also interesting to see that many of the cities have over 1 million inhabitants, and at least one with over 4 million inhabitants. These numbers have probably increased significantly since 1998, one may assume, due to global population trends; and therefore, it would be logical to estimate that the current population numbers are even higher. Source: http://www.balticdata.info/maps/Lithuania/lithuania_maps_population_distribution.htm, Google Image, accessed at 1:48pm on September 28, 2010.

3. Map of the HDI (Human Development Index of counties along the United States and Mexico border from 2009)

This map shows the difference between the human development index for the United States and for Mexico in 2000. The Human Development Index is a measure of "human development", and is used as a way to rank countries based on this development. What I find interesting about this map is that the lowest HDI County on the US side (Starr County Texas) is higher than the highest HDI municipality in Mexico (i.e., Mexicali). This highlights the fact that the difference in wealth of the two bordering countries leads to large numbers of people from Mexico choosing to emigrate from Mexico, risking a lot, to move just a few hundred miles away, where they may have more opportunity to live a "better" life. I think that a map like this one will help tremendously with policy for immigration into the United States from Mexico. Especially in Southern California, we hear politicians argue that we can close off the borders of the United States with projects, such as a wall, but when we see the incredible disparity between these two neighboring areas, we often realize that that it will not be so easy to stop illegal migration over the border entirely, and so perhaps policy should be considered concerning how to improve the situation, beginning with the source of the disparity. Source: Google Image, Human Development Report 2009, accessed at 2:29pm on September 28, 2010.