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Geologic Map of the Blackhawk Quadrangle: South Dakota
map courtesy of South Dakota Geological Survey, USA
Map [PDF 17.8MB]
Judges' Comments
The geological map is a highly formalized, highly stylized, and strictly structured map genre. It typically carries a tremendous amount of information in a densely packed package. Such a map can easily become lurid, confused, disorganized and bewildering. This particular map, however, has risen to the challenges of the genre in an exemplary fashion.
The difficult color situation was particularly well handled. The graceful formal balance and skilful control of white space lifts this map out of the pedestrian. It serves as a real testament to solid traditional map making.
The judges point out the use of well integrated vector contour data, with finely drawn standard and index contour lines, instead of the increasingly ubiquitous hill shade for delivery of terrain information.
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Kolkata—BBD Bag to Alipur
map courtesy of the National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization, Government of India
Map [PDF 7.2MB]
Judges' Comments
This is a tourist or way-finding map of the city of Kolkata, understood to be one of a pair of maps covering the central part of this major Indian city.
This map exhibits a fine graphic balance, and establishes a good hierarchical range of visual levels which coexist and interact on the page without interfering with each other.
Text is handled in a particularly fine manner; especially in regard to the dimensions of color, weight, font and relation to other symbolization. The point symbols employed, largely custom productions, are also worth comment. Even where the shape of the actual symbol itself is obscure, or less than obvious in its depiction, each symbol is clearly distinguishable as different.
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Worldwide Loggerhead Nesting Sites 2005
map courtesy of Conservation International, USA
Map [PDF 3.9MB]
Judges' Comments
This map (and its companion displaying Leatherback sites) presents a great deal of globally distributed information in a very small space, and it meets that challenge cleanly, clearly and elegantly. The focus of the map is on nesting beaches: the edge between the land and the sea, and the subdued marine and terrestrial context sits well in the background, supporting but not interfering with the thematic presentation. The nature of the data distribution required a number of insets, and these were handled very well, both in their integration with the overall map and in their identification and location. Finally, the densely overlapping proportional point symbols are readable and effective.
Map Description
In mapping the Worldwide Loggerhead Nesting Sites 2005, it was important to convey magnitude differences in a way the reader could instantly recognize. Graduated circles were a natural choice, and I selected the diameters for these circles using a chart based on Flannery’s calculations. Even as insets, however, some regions had many large counts within a small area, resulting in overlapping circles which could obscure each other as well as the base map. It was important for the reader to see where the center of each circle was (to determine the location of the beach), to see the circle size, and to see all circles. The solution I chose was two-fold. In addition to graduated size, I used a graduated transparency for beaches with more than 100 nests and included a crosshair centroid for each circle with a nesting count greater than 500. The progressive transparency allows each circle to be seen, while the crosshair assists the reader in recognizing the beach location for the larger circles, which might otherwise not be clear.
Although all national political borders were included, only those countries with nesting sites were labeled. This helps to avoid clutter, and focuses attention on the beach locations.
Data compilation was critical. Information came from a large number of researchers worldwide, and had to be vetted, brought into a common structure, and standardized. Various anomalies were encountered; for instance, some GPS coordinates received were truncated or entered incorrectly (wrong sign, degrees minutes seconds entered as decimal degrees, etc.) with the result that the point was not in the proper location. These were corrected based on research and reference GIS data.
Another issue was that some beaches were monitored but recorded no nests, while some known nesting beaches had no data for that year. Since it is important to show all the beaches in order to display global trends and to highlight gaps in research, it was necessary to distinguish between the two. I chose to show beaches with zero nest counts as a small circle in the same color as the other nesting beaches with data, and to keep “no data” beaches consistent through all the sea turtle species maps as a small black square.
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