New ESRI GIS support materials

Jason Sawle shared this on World GIS Day.

Part of a forthcoming set of resources for students and teachers to explore the world.

Sharing the blog on Substack

I've been sharing my blogs over on my Substack Newsletter. This comes out weekly and provides an update on blog posts, projects, news, books, images and events linked to geography.

Subscribe here.

Digital assessment - some trials

This is coming soon...

Katie Hall has shared some of her recent work exploring digital assessment options.

She has been working with Qualifications Wales to look at a possible model for doing this.

Nathan Evans from Qualifications Wales has written a blog post about progress to date.

This includes some videos of the tasks that learners were asked to do.

And then you can have a go yourself at doing the activity here.

250 000 page views

Well it's taken a while to get here... this blog is one of my older ones... thanks for your interest and for reading.

Maps on Vinyl

Coming to the UK later this month is a book by Damien Saunder.

It is called Maps on Vinyl.

Description from the author/publisher.

Visit the website and scroll down to see lots of examples.

Presenting 415 album covers – beautifully reproduced, expertly laid out and accompanied by deeply researched text – Maps on Vinyl will especially appeal to map enthusiasts, vinyl junkies, music fans, graphic designers and artists.

The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book. 


Records by artists including Madonna, Oasis, Coldplay, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, XTC, MC5, Queen, New Order, James Brown, Brian Eno and Weezer are featured, with cover art created by many giants of the design world, including Peter Saville, Curtis McNair, Richard Gray, Alton Kelly, Stanley Mouse, Neville Garrick, Roger Dean and Pedro Bell.

The records headlined span music from 1939 to today, and the book is divided into eight chapters highlighting different aspects of the collection – ‘C(art)ography’, ‘We Built This City’, ‘On the Road’, ‘African Beats’, ‘Astroworlds’, ‘Ocean Whispers’, ‘Maps with Attitude’ and ‘Music from Here’.

Maps on Vinyl is a beautiful artefact, but it’s also an important historical and cultural document, revealing how maps have been used in album cover design to reinforce a lyrical story, share a political view, express concern for the state of the world or creatively identify the origins of the music and the people who make it.

There's a Guardian piece about the author here.

It provides more details about the book.

The selection criteria for the book was strict: no landscape paintings; no satellite photography. “A map had to be an abstraction of a geographic form – real or fictitious – and show spatial relationships. That distinction helped narrow the collection.”

While maps are often celebrated for their beauty, they can also contain layers of meaning, says Saunder. “Even the most basic shapes of countries can draw out a lot of feelings – positive and negative.”

It also provides a few examples of maps that were included...

Such as this cover from Talking Heads.

All proceeds from the sale of the book are going to Support Act, an organisation helping musicians deal with the emotional, physical and financial challenges rife in the industry.

I shall certainly be getting a copy of this.

National Geographic's MapMaker

Jason Sawle has shared ten teaching tips for National Geographic's MapMaker.

Here's one for example that I used to make a lot more use of than now....

Climate Shift Index

The Climate Shift Index was mentioned by ITV Anglia presenter Chris Page in his forecast last night.

It is produced by Climate Central who perform a similar role to Carbon Brief in providing reports in the arena of Climate Change.

This work is significant as the Trump administration is deleting and stopping access to research and reports on Climate Change in the USA. This will not stop it happening by the way... it will just make it harder to prepare, and make the impacts even worse... and not just in the US.

Check out the Global Map showing how much the climate has shifted.

The Climate Shift Index (CSI) is a system that quantifies the influence of climate change on local daily temperatures around the world.

The Climate Shift Index ranges from -5 to +5. Positive levels indicate temperatures that are becoming more likely due to climate change (negative scores indicate conditions that are becoming less likely).

A CSI of level 5 means that a temperature is occurring at least 5 times more frequently when compared to a world without human-caused carbon pollution. This temperature would be very difficult to encounter in a world without climate change – not necessarily impossible, just highly unlikely.

Here's how to interpret the scale from 1-5 and in the negative too.

And here is the interpretation guide for specific numbers. 

Zoom in to your local area to see what the likely impact of climate change is on the weather in your area as the summer goes on....

Images: Climate Central

How big is Glastonbury?

Always good to have little map 'experiments' / projects like this appearing. Glastonbury's gates opened yesterday.

Glastonbury is big. Fifteen years ago today, I was there... in the heat, working with the Geography Collective in the Greek Kids Zone. I've blogged about it before - search the blog for 'Glastonbury'.

This map shows you how big, although from my experience it felt quite a lot larger than it is shown here. I think there are other areas still beyond what is shown here - whether car parking or additional camping and the security zone.

It's made by Geoffrey Prytherch.

Here's Ely compared to the site.

And here's one of my images from up near the letters... at night, it looks pretty awesome too. This was sunset on the 24th of June.

Image: Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

Map of the Week blog

The Map of the Week blog has been around for quite a while - dating back to 2005 (which is about the time I started some of my blogs). Produced by Dug from Massachusetts, USA.

Why not lose yourself by digging into the archive for a few hours...

Young Geographer of the Year Competition

A chance for your students to create an ESRI StoryMap.

It's that time of year again for the launch of the Young Geographer of the Year category. 

This annual competition is run by the Royal Geographical Society.

The Young Geographer of the Year is the Society’s annual competition which recognises the outstanding work of the next generation of geographers. With its age ranges spanning the primary years to A Level, the competition encourages thoughtful and creative answers to the competition’s theme which is set each year.

The Society encourages schools to run their own in-house competition and then send their top 10 entries into the international competition. The Young Geographer competition has been running for over 20 years and every year thousands of children across the world take part.
2025 competition

The theme for the Young Geographer of the Year competition 2025 is:

Understanding islands

Let’s take a closer look at the World’s islands.

It is estimated that our planet contains almost 670,000 islands, of which around 11,000 are permanently inhabited. Islands have a unique geography; their landscapes and coastlines vary massively – some are home to volcanoes; others are barely above sea level. Some are barren, deserts or rocky outcrops, others lush vegetation havens for a range of unique wildlife and plant species. There are islands seen by many as popular holiday destinations, and there are others that are inaccessible or many miles from civilisation. Every island is unique, and every island has its challenges.

The geography of islands is an interesting one. 

Some are threatened by climate change and issues such as sea level rise, and through this are embroiled in the geopolitics of the climate emergency and the mitigation strategies implemented through both international policies and local-level action. The people who live on islands face a range of socio-economic, cultural or historical challenges, from over-use of their towns and cities by tourists, to access to resources, clean water or adequate living conditions. The ‘ownership’ of some islands is contested; some are protected, others are fought over because of their geopolitical or strategic significance. In some places, islands are being created to meet the need for more space to satisfy our growing population. By exploring and understanding islands, including the island we live on, we can unlock a multitude of geographical themes and connections across people, places and environments.

The Society invites you to create a poster (Esri StoryMap or poster for KS5 entrants) to explore islands and highlight the geographical themes, challenges and solutions that connect across both human and physical geography to make islands unique. We are looking for eye catching, creative and informative posters and StoryMaps that delve into the socio-economic, cultural, political and physical aspects of a range of islands, showcasing their features and exploring how islands can be connected through the challenges that they face and the solutions they use to address those challenges. 

Your posters and StoryMaps should think about geographical themes across people, places and environments.

Image: Alan Parkinson, waves on Reynisfjara beach - shared on Flickr

ESRI Visualiser

If you need to show students the world and have a free GIS / Visualisation tool, check out ESRI's Visualiser.

This is a free tool with no login. Maps can be viewed in 2D or as a 3D sphere.

There are some measuring tools, and also some layers that can be added e.g. ocean currents.

LiverpoolGEE

 

Via the latest issue of 'Geography' journal.

The University of Liverpool has shared a variety of Google Earth Engine tools for researchers (and educators).

This includes options for coding using Google Earth Engine.

Some school based resources are apparently on the way, and if you'd like to make some suggestions there's a form on the website.

EMU Analytics

 

EMU Analytics have shared a number of interactive maps on their Location Insights Explorer.

The Christmas Dinner interactive map visualizes where your Christmas dinner ingredients come from and also allows you to compare their 2018 agricultural production to that of 1945. You can therefore use the map to see if the areas associated with different livestock and crops has changed since World War II. You can also how their production has dramatically increased. For example in 1945 there were 1.6 million pigs. There are now 3.9 million pigs in England. 

Conversely the number of hectares given over to growing potatoes in 1945 was almost 4 times higher than it is today.

One thing that the map clearly reveals is that farming is much more intensively concentrated in certain areas today. Back in 1945 the farming of potatoes, pigs and turkeys was fairly evenly distributed across the country. In 2018 there is a less even distribution with livestock and crops being grown much more intensively in specific areas of the country.

This shows where cities are at risk of high temperatures which may make them unliveable.

Text from Keir Clarke's marvellous map blog.

Use the drop downs on the left hand table to discover a whole host of other maps on a range of themes

e.g. here's one on Social Infrastructure. As you can see, Norfolk doesn't have a great deal of this, and I live in a dark red area...

Other useful maps are:

- a fly-tipping map showing where incidence is highest

- HDI and Global risk mapping

- Tescos coverage in London

- areas where you are more likely to get stuck in a lift

Don't forget the CDRC maps as well for location insight.

Notable memorials in Central London

A map of notable memorials.

SHIFT podcast with Jack Dangermond of esri

 

Listen to the SHIFT podcast which features an interview with Jack Dangermond, founder of esri. He is the President of esri.

From deciding where to build a new business, airport or fire station, to understanding the potential impact of decisions regarding conservation or governance, people make billions of maps everyday using GIS. 

We explore the history and evolution of this tech with one of its pioneers, in the latest instalment of our oral history project.

He is clear that "geography is everything!"

A few points that Jack makes:

• Between 4 and 5 billion maps are made on esri's platforms every day.
• GIS digitises geography and puts it into a geographical frame.
• Organisations are run by geography.
• Do analytics of the geography behind the maps.
• GIS tools help frame the decision making they do.
• FEMA and other emergency departments use the tools to plan the response to hazards
• Roger Tomlinson invented the term GIS
• Talks about getting his customers together and working out what they could develop as a product
• esri has 680 000 customers... when they started they had single digit numbers of customers
• A third of revenue is spent on advancing products and R&D
• UPS saved hundreds of millions of dollars from rerouting their vehicles
• Helped with EBOLA 
• 1.3 trillion maps were created showing the spread of COVID19 around the world
• "Geography is everything"

Find out more here.