Esri Press Publishes Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition
From Grid Coordinate Systems and Map Accuracy to Spatial Pattern Analysis and Multimedia Mapping, the Book Covers Everything You Need to Know about Using Maps
By Carla Wheeler, ArcWatch Editor and Mike Schwartz, Esri Press Editor
An old proverb holds that "a picture is worth a thousand words." That's why most people assume nothing could be easier to follow than a map—a term so deeply entrenched in our collective psyche that its very mention implies clarity, as in "map out your proposal."
 The new book Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition, opens a window into how to better understand and use maps. |
Yet mapmakers know their creations aren't always as intuitive and straightforward as they seem, and that their best efforts would be wasted without skilled map users.
Designing a map serves no purpose unless people understand what it's trying to convey, which makes Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition, a must read for people who work with, study, and appreciate maps and want to improve their map-reading and analysis skills. With nearly 500 maps, photographs, tables, and charts to illustrate the text, this informative volume from Esri Press teaches the basic concepts of geography and the skills of map reading and analysis.
"It's a book that's replete with information about all aspects of map use," said A. Jon Kimerling, the book's coauthor and interim chairman of the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
The book represents an ultimate resource of information on maps including topographic, planimetric, and qualitative and quantitative thematic maps. It includes a detailed overview of map scale and projections, grid coordinate systems, relief portrayal, area and volume measures, GPS and maps, and spatial pattern analysis.
Map Use is ideal for people who need to understand the world spatially including anyone who must know how to read and analyze maps for professional, navigational, and recreational purposes such as sailing, mountaineering, and flying. Map Use also serves well as a resource for introductory cartography courses and is an invaluable reference for the home, office, and library.
"Map Use was written for people who want to use maps to better understand not only the physical environment but the human, social, political, and economic environments as well," said Kimerling, a geography professor who has been involved in mapping for more than 40 years. "This edition takes readers beyond the graphic symbols that comprise maps and into cartographers' decision-making processes to give them the insights they need to better use maps."
In a recent interview, Kimerling said that more people use maps today than ever before, especially since evolving from static products—published in an atlas, for instance—to interactive products online or in CD-ROMs or DVDs. Maps can now be queried and turned into 3D animations. "Map use is increasing tremendously in the animated sense," he said. "For example, this climate change problem is being mapped with animations that show past, current, and predicted changes in a 3D (environment). So people can see on the spherical Earth these changing aspects of the environment. This was impossible several decades ago."
Kimerling also said that multimedia mapping is a growing trend.
People can now watch video clips, see photographs, listen to sound clips, and read text associated with a point on a map. Said Kimerling, "They are all fantastic developments in mapping and map use, and they are all discussed in the book." Listen to a podcast with Kimerling.
The book is divided into two major parts: Map Reading and Map Analysis. The first part will help readers develop an appreciation for how the mapmaker represents the environment in the reduced, abstract form of a map. Kimerling and coauthors Aileen R. Buckley, Phillip C. Muehrcke, and Julianna O. Muehrcke discuss the geographic data that make up a map, the process required to transform that information from the environment into mapping techniques, and map accuracy issues.
The second part includes chapters on distance and direction finding, position finding and navigation, GPS and maps, area and volume measures, surface analysis, and spatial pattern and association analysis.
"The underlying theme that separates Map Use from other books on mapping is its emphasis that maps do not merely show what is in our environment but are a window into how people think, adjust to their surroundings, make decisions, and communicate geographic information with each other," said Kimerling. "In this sense, users get more out of a map than the graphic product created by the cartographer, especially when they have mastered the map-reading and analysis skills so carefully presented in the book."
To buy Map Use: Reading and Analysis, Sixth Edition, visit www.esri.com/esripress or call 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, visit www.esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options or contact a local Esri distributor.
