Lab 3 : Neogeography

Here is my map of Lyon, France, which highlights where to discover the Roman and Renaissance past of the city, the most delicious gastronomic restaurants & cafés, and the best entertainment. All of the locations are from my own experience and memory as a student living in the city for a year.


View Abroad in Lyon, France in a larger map

This was my first time making a map online, and it was interesting to be able to recreate a place anywhere in the world online for others to experience (with photos, videos, and URLs). My map is like the ultimate photo album/scrapbook. Instead of just having photos and perhaps some hand-written descriptions of the places I discovered while abroad, I can add the geographic locations of each photo and videos as a way in which to interact with the places even after returning home. I can even show distances between places and map out walking routes and areas on the map. If I had seen a map like this before leaving for Lyon, I think I would have really appreciated it. But at the same time, it would perhaps have taken the fun out of discovering these places on my own, spontaneously.

Despite the possibilities Google Maps opens up, I found some problems with it. For example, the walking route is automatically drawn and it would not select the streets I wanted it to, and certain places (ie. cafés, landmarks) are marked on the Google Map but I have no idea how they were chosen and I think that many important places are left out while other not-so-important places are included. More importantly, the Google map doesn't show topography, which is really important in a city like Lyon, where the city is dominated by two large hills. These two hills are important to the city's past; combined with two prominent rivers, these topographical features played an important role in the choice of many ancient peoples to live there, including the Gauls in the 5th century BC. Due to both the possibilities and problems of Google Maps, I think there have been and will continue to be many consequences, both good and bad. One of the biggest consequences I see is that as more information is put online, less of it will exist in a tangible form. For example, sometimes I would prefer to sit down with an actual book than read it online. The same can go for a photoalbum or trip diary. I think that humans can find technology novel and appreciate it, but I think that we will still sometimes want to experience things tangibly, in reality, and so it's important to maintain a balance with the cyber world and reality.

Lab 2 : Topographic Maps

1. What is the name of the quadrangle?
Beverly Hills Quadrangle.

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?

1. Canoga Park, 2. Van Nuys, 3. Burbank, 4. Topanga, 5. Hollywood, 6. (Ocean), 7. Venice, 8. Inglewood.

3. When was the quadrangle first created?

1995.

4. What datum was used to create your map?

North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27) and North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83) [horizontal data] and Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 [vertical datum].

5. What is the scale of the map?

1 to 24,000.

6. At the above scale, answer the following:

a) 5 centimeters on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?

x = 5cm * 24,000

= 120,000 cm. / 100

= 1,200 meters.

b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?

x = 5 in * 24,000

= 120,000 in.

120,000 in. / 12 in. = 10,000 ft.

10,000 ft. / 5,280 ft

= 1.894 miles.

c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?

1/24,000 mi = 1 mi on the ground
(1/24000) * 63360 in.
= 2.640 inches.

d) three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?

1km = 1000 m = 100,000 cm

100,000 cm * 3

= 300,000 cm / 24,000

= 12.5 cm.

7. What is the contour interval on your map?

20 feet.

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of:

a) the Public Affairs Building;

Latitude - 34º4'28" N, or 34.0748º
Longitude - 118º26'35" W, or -118.439º

b) the tip of Santa Monica pier;
Latitude - 34º0'27" N, or 34.0075°
Longitude - 118º30'0" W, or -118.5°

c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir;
Latitude - 34º7'16" N, or 34.1211º
Longitude - 118º24'35" W, or -118.4097º
11/2 inches = 2'30" or 150"
1/2 inch (UFCR) = x"
150"/2 in. = 75" in. * (2/11 in.) = 13.6363"
34º7'30" - 13.64" = 34º7'16"
D + (7/60) + (16/3600) = 34.1211º

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:

a) Greyston Mansion (in Greystone Park);

580 ft.; 176.784 m.
1 ft = .3048 m
580 ft * .3048 m.
= 176.784 m.

b) Woodlawn Cemetery;
140 ft.; 42.672 m.
1 ft = .3048 m
140 ft. * .3048 m.
= 42.672 m.

c) Crestwood Hills Park;
680 ft.; 207.264 m.
1 ft = .3048 m
680 ft. * .3048 m.
=207.264 m.

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?

Zone 11.

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?

³61.5 Easting

³⁷63 Northing

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?

1000 m. * 1000 m. = 1 million sq. meters.

13. 

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?

 +14 degrees.

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?

The water flows South.
16.

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.