New Google Earth home screen

 

🌏 Google Earth now has a new homescreen, helping you organize 🗂️ your 🗺️ mapping projects, check it out in this 📽️ 1 min video ✨

👉 https://t.co/AYqPvQcP6C

— Google Earth (@googleearth) November 18, 2024

 

GIS Day - check out the RGS-IBG resources

 GIS Day is this Wednesday.

GIS Day is this Wednesday 20! Help mark the day by exploring our GIS resources for teachers. 📚

These educational tools will enable you to bring real-world geography into your classroom and show students the power of GIS. 💻https://t.co/GzjnCSib8l ⬇️#GISday2024

— RGS-IBG Schools (@RGS_IBGschools) November 18, 2024

Scrambled Maps

 

I've been following Keir Clarke since the early days of Google Earth and he has always shared fascinating map links, many of which I have shared here and on my other blogs.

His latest (ish) is a game he has been developing called Scrambled Maps.

Go here to give it a go.

Living England 2022-3 Habitat Map

The new Living England 2022-23 habitat map is now live! Download freely from https://t.co/rR1gT2IaPl (coming soon on Magic). It’s more reliable & user-friendly than ever - providing essential habitat data for natural capital monitoring across England. pic.twitter.com/5PmDIHjeli

— NE Chief Scientist (@NEChiefSci) November 12, 2024

Visit the link, and see the details in the technical report.

 

The Power of Where

 That's the title of a new book by Jack Dangermond in association with the wider GIS community.

A description:

The Power of Where presents the visionary concepts of Jack Dangermond, cofounder of Esri®, the world’s leading mapping software company. With a foreword by bestselling author and writer for The Atlantic, James Fallows, it’s filled with the latest web maps, illustrations, and real-life stories from a vibrant global community of geographic information systems (GIS) users. If you’ve never heard of GIS, this is the book for you, and if you think you know what GIS is, you’ll discover much more.

From the Ring of Fire to the Fertile Crescent, The Power of Where takes us on a visual and narrative journey into the world of modern GIS and reveals its growing potential to address the world’s greatest challenges. The technology is already ubiquitous, from running city governments and performing civic science to conserving open spaces and managing logistics—virtually every human endeavor.

Central to the book is the geographic approach—a way of solving problems that uses spatial location to perceive and understand patterns—from wildlife migration and rising seas to urban planning and food production. Drawing from 60 years of research and experience, the author writes from a fervent conviction that through this approach, we can confront climate change, hunger, water scarcity, inequity, and issues large and small in our everyday lives.

The book describes the methods of the geographic approach—visualization, communication, analysis, collaboration, accounting, and design—and shows how vast amounts of integrated data are propelling spatial applications into the mainstream. A companion website brings interactive maps and stories to life and serves as a starting point for students and educators—and anyone considering joining the GIS user community.

The Power of Where reveals how technologies such as web services, mobile devices, artificial intelligence, extended reality, and 3D visualization intersect with GIS and outlines the new opportunities they are creating. Its maps and stories arise from a passion for the power of place and from the mutually reinforcing revolutions in Earth observation, analysis, and collaboration that GIS and the human spirit make possible.

Explore live examples from the book and learn more about interactive mapping and the tools of modern GIS

Widely acknowledged as the leading visionary in the field of geographic information system (GIS) technology, Jack Dangermond and his wife, Laura, launched the Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969 with a shared vision that system thinking along with computer mapping and spatial analysis could help people design a better future. For more than 50 years, their vision has guided Esri’s GIS mapping and analytic technologies worldwide. Jack’s life work has brought many honors, including the Planet and Humanity Medal from the International Geographical Union, the Champions of Earth Award from the United Nations, and the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the National Geographic Society. Jack and Laura live in their hometown of Redlands, CA, where Esri is based.

New Antarctica GIS from BAS

The Antarctic Digital Database is a free new GIS linked to Antarctica.

What's that? A new map viewer bringing together all the data of the Antarctic Digital Database? Freely available?!

Go enjoy yourself zooming into bits of Antarctica, map lovers ⬇️https://t.co/DWwaghwzUh

The BAS ✨MAGIC✨ team looks after this project for @SCAR_Tweets. pic.twitter.com/vVqXQOxdV6

— British Antarctic Survey 🐧 (@BAS_News) May 18, 2024

Data can be downloaded through the data catalogue in Geopackage or Shapefile format.

Coastline and contour datasets are also accessible in the ArcGIS Living Atlas.

The datasets included in the ADD are:Coastline, including grounding lines and ice shelf fronts
Rock outcrop
Contours
Lakes
Moraine
Streams
Seamask
ADD data limit at 60°S

All datasets are in WGS84 Antarctic Polar Stereographic projection, EPSG 3031.

Watershed Pollution Map

 A new mapping option linked to the current river pollution issues...

Very excited to announce the launch of
THE WATERSHED POLLUTION MAP!

River health, landfills, sewage, road run-off, intensive farming, big industry, forever chemicals, abandoned mines, bathing waters, flood risk, protected areas and so much more... 🧵https://t.co/upIKfAJQhP pic.twitter.com/FnlRgip9ld

— Rachel Salvidge (@RachSalv) June 27, 2024

Visit the map here. 

What are the sources of pollution in your own local area?

Make Ways

 

We've started #MakeWays for walking - colouring the landscape to show good and bad ways to go.https://t.co/M6ZWPvKgAE

We're going to have different maps for different ways of getting about. What should we add to the pilot next?👩‍🦽🏇🛹🏊🏽‍♂️

I'd love to hear from wheelers!… pic.twitter.com/schrj5nMTD

— Dan Raven-Ellison (@DanRavenEllison) May 17, 2024

Visualisation of population by age in London

Thanks to Bob Lang for the link to this visualisation...

 

New Ordnance Survey Data Layers

 New data is really important to those who make maps.

Ordnance Survey data layers are being added periodically, which allows people to investigate the landscape in more detail.

Field Boundary Data

The new Field Boundary data covers both rural and moorland areas across Great Britain and identifies the nature of field boundary features, for vegetated and manmade features such as hedgerows and stonewalls, captured through an automated process. Other characteristics are also included in the dataset such as the height and width of vegetated field boundary features.

OS Land Cover

OS is also enhancing the land cover information in the OS NGD, by linking to habitat classification schemes and providing percentage coverage information for natural land cover features. This will provide a consistent baseline of the natural environment that supports customers with habitat monitoring. The land cover enhancements cover natural land cover features across Great Britain.

Vernacular Names Tool

The Ordnancc Survey has been collecting vernacular place names. 

It has produced an additional set of information on its mapping database which includes 9000 names which local people use to describe places which may have a more official name. This is to help locate people whose problem may occur in a location which they know by a vernacular name...

The Guardian has an article on the work.

The data layer produced is called the VNT or Vernacular Names Tool. This article explains more.

The database, hosted in the OS National Geographic Database, is a replacement for FINTAN, a mapping tool created more than ten years ago in response to a request from HM Coastguard. It was created in partnership with OS and was designed to allow users to upload any local name, alternative name or nickname for a coastal feature alongside the accurate location or existing geographic name in the mapping database. These include cliffs, caves, sandbanks, coastal car parks and buildings to name a few. This ensured that HM Coastguard responders could get to emergencies – however their location was described – with much greater confidence and speed.

On a visit to the OS HQ, the Princess Royal added her own alternative name to the database.

The Coal Authority Maps

The Coal Authority has a GIS site where you can identify the locations of previous activity to mine for coal.

This was a big part of my life growing up in South Yorkshire. My grandfather and other family members were coal miners and we knew there were coal seams running under our village and surrounding areas - I remember a house collapsing from subsidence once. Now you can find these signs of the past on this map from the Coal Authority.

The miners' strike was something else I remember well. Several friends spent a lot of time marching and fund raising. Our minibus was occasionally stopped when carrying out undergraduate fieldwork as the police thought we might be flying pickets.

The village where I lived was only a few miles from the Maltby Colliery, and there was a lot of ill feeling between those who stayed out and those who went back. Orgreave was only about four miles from home too and the TV coverage of the time was all over the local news in the evening. This was a desperate time for many. There has been a number of recent TV dramas and documentaries as it is now coming up to 40 years on from the strike - amazingly.

All aboard the Windrush Line

A lot of coverage of this story this week, not all of it positive. 

Londoners have become very familiar with the names of the underground lines, including the new Elizabeth Line (originally Cross Rail) and the Jubilee line (with their Royal choice of names). Now Sadiq Khan has outlined new names for the overground lines to aid discussions about particular routes - Londoners and visitors will quickly adapt to their new names, but there have been some predictable moans about the nature of the names... from the usual suspects.

In Year 7, we study the story of the Windrush generation, through the use of the book 'Windrush Child' from the late Benjamin Zephaniah.

This BBC News page explains what the names of each of the lines means.

Image source: Transport for London

The Windrush Line will run through several areas associated with the Windrush migrants (in London at least).