Consumer Maps

Map from our car rental company.  It covered the entire country, and the folding made it very convenient to open on your lap.  Note the blue grid, which is (1) very tall and skinny, and (2) rotated with respect to the edge of the paper map.  The grid is latitude/longitude, with equal spacing in degrees in both directions, but the convergence of the merdians at such high latitudes make the grid very rectangular.  The map is on a UTM projection, used for all the map data in Norway, and we are far from the central meridian of the UTM zone--or maybe not so far, but the differences are magnified at such high laititudes.  Overall this was probably by far the best map I've ever gotten with a rental comparny.

The rental car came with a GPS navigation system, which we mostly ignored in favor of systems on our cell phones.  We use Maps-Me and Google Maps, both of which allow downloading the data on wifi and then work without an internet connection which we didn't pay for and which does not extend everywhere in the wilds of Norway.  I find the car systems too hard to initialize and set up, when I will only be in the car a few days.  On this one, however, I did notice that the roads have two colors (cyan and darker blue), which shows the tunnels where you will lose GPS (lights are on everywhere in Norway, so you don't have to worry about turning them on, and there are a lot of tunnels).

Free tourist hking maps use a subdued topographic base (I will bet from the national mapping agency), and colored overprints with with hiking trails.  This one is from Balestrand.  North is to the right.

Another map for the same hike, in color, from a pamphlet with 25 choices.

With the maps and the well maintained hiking trails (this picture shows paving stones crossing a boggy region), it was hard to get lost, even without using the maps in a GPS app on the phone.

Road junctions had signs in all directions, and often tables or benches to sit and admire nature.  Probably no one in Norway needed a break to catch their breath, but maybe a few tourists took advantage for that.

Hiking maps

Norway has a series of 1:50K topo maps which make outstanding displays on your cell phone for hiking.  They have directions which translate into English.  They suggest using GeoViewer from LizardTech, but you can also use Avdenza PDF Maps  or the Android version of MICRODEM.

These use the proprietary MrSID format, of which I am not a great fan since software must go through the LizardTech interface, and I prefer that government mapping data use free and open formats.  It has also been years since I have seen any data in this format, and had considered removing it from MICRODEM as just bloat in the program.

However the implementation in Norway turned out to be very good.

The format is multiresolution.  The best resolution is 2.5 m per pixel, although the 5 m resolution is virtually indistinguishable and takes up 1/4 of the disk space. 

There is a single file for each of the 18 Norwegian counties, which correspond with US states or provinces in most other countries.  They range in size from 11 to 500 MB for the 8 we downloaded, which took up a total of 1.5 GB (a relatively small download for a FIOS home connection). Uncompressed as a Geotiff they take up about 200 times more disk space, but you only want to look at them subset and zoomed in.

 

The data for Oslo.  This scale is only useful to pick the region to extract at full scale.

Downtown Oslo at full scale (2.5 or 5 m per pixel. which are visually very similar).  Note that there are symbols for navigation aids, and these maps could probably be used as nautical charts--we follower the progress of the ferries we took on them (NB, they probably have severe, legalistic warnings that you should not use them for this, just like your GPS warns you not to rely on it, even if at its worst it will be better an any your options for getting your position).

There is a version with hillshading, but it is very subtle, and might not we worth the doubling in size of the MrSid files.

Map of Svolvaer.  The hiking trails are show on the map, so you can use the GPS on the phone to follow your hike.

The maps are visually very appealing; I think European topo maps are generally much prettier than those in the USA.  The US topos now use PDF format, with the rationale that the KISS nature makes them good for the general public and they don't think real GIS users should want to use them.  It also means you must download a number of individual files and then figure out how to merge them, which GDAL now makes relatively simple if tedious.

The only real drawback to using these maps on your phone for navigation on your cellphone is the GPS draining of the battery; you need an external battery to get past the half day mark.

Arctic Circle

We just got back from a trip to Norway, and traveled north of the Arctic Circle.  Since it was almost the June solstice, we have 24 hours of daylight.  We used trains, automobiles, Hurtigren ferries, and an airplane.

Route of the ship in red, overlaid on the Norwegian topo map.  The ferry makes a big deal of crossing the Arctic Circle, and encourages everyone to come up on deck to see the monument on Vikingen Island.

Vikingen Island, with the monument on the right side.

Closeup of the monument.

The passengers on deck to get pictures, providing some idea of the conditions at 0715.

In my intro oceanography and physical geography classes, we teach that the Arctic Circel is as 66.5 degrees north.  The Norwegian maps show the monument at 66.53 degrees, but shows something else a few km to the north.  I did not stay on deck to investigate it at the time

The Arctic Circle in 2015, at 66.56 north.  If you want to be precise,  66.5 is not accurate enough, and you also have to account for the fact that the earth wobbles, and the Arctic Circle migrates about 15 m a year.  It would have been at Vikingen quite some time ago, so there may have been some licence with the placement of the monument to create a tourist trip moment for the cruise ships.

The Prime Meridian used to have a similar monument, and a lone of people lined up to get their picture with each leg in a different hemisphere.  There are issues with the exact location, and the Observatory has to explain why your GPS does not show 0 when you straddle the line.  The last time I was at Greenwich, the monument was gone, and with no need for a backdrop, the lines to get the picutre were gone.

Field Testing Maps for Hiking

This weekend we tried out hiking maps for use with our cell phones.  We created the maps with digital data downloaded from the web, and then downloaded them to the phones to use with my software.

For field verifitcation, we went to Susquehanna State Park, where we took the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway Trail, to the base of the Conowingo Dam.  Coming back we took trails above the river level, labelled as very strenuous, what that is a very East Coast flatlands view of activity levels.  Altogether we hiked about 14 km.

At the dam.  Our visit was inspired by a show on MPT about the dam.

It might have been peak flower season in the flats along the river.

This was not prime time for eagles, (and the attendant bird watchers),  but we saw ducks, herons, and a few eagles.

Our route on a merge of the 4 USGS topo quads that covered it.

Our route on the DSM created with the lidar point could.  Most of our route was in the trees, for which this map is not very helpful

Our route on the MD DNR state park map.  This was the first park map I have seen that was a GeoPDF, with the potential for using the map in a GIS program or a mapping program on the cell phone.

Close up of the USGS map.  This one has the trails on it; when we hiked in Joshua Tree National Park, and at Sedona AZ, last month, the USGS maps did not have hiking trails, so we had to add them from OpenStreetMap.

Directions for data download, processing on the PC, and transfer to the phone are at https://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/hiking_maps.html   If you have questions, use the forum at http://forums.delphiforums.com/microdem/start.  We are working to make the process as seamless as possible, and document it.

Map Names and Politics

When I was teaching last fall, I adapted many of my sample data sets and examples to the local country.  There was not the same quantity of high resolution map data (the US is just about unique in the quantity and quality of free mapping data, but that is rapidly changing for western Europe, which is many cases now has better lidar data).

When we talked about the national projection, my students told me the country had 4 zones, I, II, III, and IV.  When I checked with the international repository of map projections, http://www.epsg-registry.org/. I could only find zones I and II.  After some digging, III and IV had different names, but the same parameters.  III and IV covered one of the cartography "in limbo" places like Gaza, the West Bank, or Kashmir, or the names of the seas between Korea and Japan or Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.  Or to come closer to home, the different status of US mapping data covering the "other" areas like the USVI, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, which have become much more normalized and treated like the states and DC since I started doing GIS.   But the normalization may not be perfect; the Census Bureau apparently could not come up with a citizenship question for the 2020 Census that covered all the categories of citizenship for residents of those places.

I was reminded of the power of names today, when I noticed on a science paper that the publisher did not consider any maps in the paper to have authoritative boundaries or place names, which has been a long time tradition with the US State Department and other US mapping agencies.  You have to be careful what you put on the map, and necessarily accept the version from one side of the border.  You can see the same thing in Google Earth or Google Maps, if you look at any of "in limbo" places.

Legal disclaimer from NGA for the gazetteer files.

Legal disclaimer from large commercial publisher of scientific journals.

Maps of Dreamland

This map shows the coverage of the US with the  USGSTopo maps available online in PDF format.  The colors show the year the maps were created.  What is more interesting is that there is one void in the lower 48 states, the white patch in southern Nevada.  

Zoom in to show the region without current USGS topo maps.  Note the red urban area in the SE part of the map, which is part of Clark County, or urban Las Vegas.   Nothing crazy going on there, beyond the normal for Las Vegas.  To the north is heaven (one of the quads in actually named Heaven's Well), some of which is really hard administratively to get into--I've tried, and have been in parts of it.  Some of it also very open federal land belonging to the Desert National  Wildlife Range, protected only by few roads and rugged topography.  The easternmost row of missing quads includes the Sheep Range, where I mapped for my PhD, and have led a series of field trips to see the spectacular geology.   I had previously discovered that this much of this area lacks the high resolution imagery which covers most of the rest of the US.  

All good things come to an end

We have left Rabat, and are now back in the US.

The focus of the blog will now  shift more to computer mapping.........

We're gong to the zoo, zoo, zoo.....

On a recent Sunday we visited the Rabat zoo.  It's off in the suburbs, so we took a petit taxi, but on the way back, walked to the end of the only tram line I had not been too, so we've now covered all the tram routes in the city.

The zoo has some Moroccan animals (Barbary lion, extinct in the wild, and Barbary macques) which did not photograph well, some typical African wildlife, some farm animals, and animals and birds from around the world.

Playful lemur, hard to contain, reminded us of Christmas in the Amsterdam zoon.

Zoo had many varieties of African ungulates.

Our trips on the Morocco train network

This map shows our travels in Morocco, in red on the train network, and in yellow on a tour van.

The thin black lines show the segments we have missed:

1. To the coast in the south, to Safi, which does not have enough to warrant a long ride.
2. To the east to Wad Zam, but there might not be passenger service.  (It turns out there is one train a day, and the map of the rail route used a different scheme for turning Arabic into the Latin alphabet, and you need to search the train schedules for Oued Zem, and then you have to take a train that departs at 6 AM, when it runs at all....)
3. To the far east at Oujda, on the Algerian border (which is closed).  It is a very long haul, and not a lot to see.

We will also get the line to the Casablanca airport, but that's so short you barely see it at this scale.

The area we never got to is the far south, the Anti-Atlas and beyond.  It's a long way, and beyond the reach of the rails.

75th anniversary Anfa/Casablanca Conference

Yesterday we went to a conference at the National Library to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the conference in Morocco where Churchill and FDR met to plan the next stages of the World War II.  It was sponsored by the American and British Ambassadors, but due to the US government shutdown, the British ambassador ran the entire show very competently, including speaking in both Arabic and French.  There were 4 speakers: American historian Meredith Hindley who has a recent book; director Allen Packwood of the archives of former British Prime Minister Churchill, FDR's granddaughter Laura Roosevelt, and an Moroccan professor who spoke in Arabic and we had not realized we should pick up headphones for simultaneous translation.


In the questions afterward, it was clear than Moroccans trace their independence to the meeting between Churchill and FDR in Morocco, and that the future King Hassan II was inspired by the invitation he wrangled to attend one of the banquets.  There were also several questions asking in the US intended to maintain its role as an inspiration to the other nations of the work; Laura Roosevelt spoke of the tradition in her family of tolerance, diversity, and the international responsibilities of the US.


Anfa was the classical name of Casablanca, and is a neighborhood today.  Moroccan historians prefer it as the name of the World War II conference.

National Library of Morocco.  This is a short walk from out apartment.

1943 Conference, the leaders and their military staffs.

1943 Conference, with the young teenager and future King Hassan II in the back row.

Asilah in the rain

Over the weekend, we took the train to Asilah.  It was cloudy and rainy most of the weekend, but it held off enough to walk from the train station into town, and then the see the old media and castle, and go out for a seafood dinner.  The next morning it held off long enough to to walk to the train station (19 minutes according to google maps).  On the train, there was standing water everywhere, but the countryside is starting to look very green.

View of the bean in Asilah, which is just south of Tangier.

Maybe only because it's the off season, there was wildlife in the town.

The clouds and sunlight made for a pretty landscape, and quite pleasant because it was not raining.

View south at sunset.

Palm trees and castle walls.

The walk back to the train station.  A number of Moroccan cities have the train station well outside of town.  Asilah is one of the only town north of Rabat where you can actually see the ocean from the station.  It rained while we were having breakfast, leaving all the water on the bridge, and then started again just as the train was leaving the station.

Rain, a lot, but really nice days in between

It's the rainy season, which my students inform me is two months late this year.  They arrive for class all bundled up--gloves, scarves, furry hoods, sweaters, and coats, while I wear just a light sweater.  They think I'm used to really cold weather, but Maryland is probably just a little colder than Rabat.

But in between to rain, we have some beautiful days.  We have walked along the beach (more precisely the top of the coastal cliffs, and visited the botanical gardens which are about 20 minutes from out apartment.

The beach, with the ubiquitous cat.

The waves below the cliffs.

The birds on the top of the cliffs.

The fish restaurant.  No grilled fish on a weekday noon, but the fried fish plate had squid, shrimp, and two types of whole fish.  We got there early, but it filled up rapidly.

The botanical gardens.  The cactus section is our favorite, but the entire garden is being cleaned out, ready for spring.