Challenger Expedition DIY Web Map

[Update: Spilhaus video here c/w DIY add-your-own image on eve of 150th anniversary]

The last two blogposts showed how to create correct polar maps in ArcGIS and QGIS here from publicly posted class notes blogged.

Let's look at now creating complete maps in AGOL from publicly available data, and analyzing it over time to see their historic significance. This results in this web map of the HMS Challenger 1873-1876 Expedition:

Arctic wrap-up as a story-map

Update 1: Story Map of same Northwest Passage: maps and words
Update 2: video of same Arctic Sea Ice Summer 1979–2018
Update 3: follow on story map on onshore aspects: Fire & Ice — Arctic past & future climes

Update 4: lovely Scott Polar Research Institute entrance foyer frescoes of same at the bottom

Following my previous posts on geo-awareness and transitioning platforms, I repost here this story map that wraps together the story for the Arctic region on Esri platform. You will find at its end a link to the course that cover both poles on Esri and QGIS as complete exercises in polar mapping.

GIS education & awareness

[Update: another way to make it all more accessible, is to wrap-up the Arctic data as a story-map.]

There is a patent need to better explain all things geospatial to us as geo professionals as well as to the public addressed here.

A fond farewell to two old friends

[Update: read here my  new occupation inspired by these six months later]

Over seven years after starting to post on arcgis.com and almost five years after posting mega-datasets on GeoCloud2 via AWS, I have to seriously reconsider my investment in web data. I already mentioned my new direction two posts ago, and now stood down my AWS instance - thanks @mhoegh for his help on Mapcentia - and I will let my arcgis.com account lapse next May, five years after it was created (I already rationalised my Esri accounts, hence the two year gap with opener). Do not despair however...

Historic climate data revisited - 5 - live polar maps

Here are the maps promised at the end of the last post c/w description in that post:

Historic climate data revisited - 4 - polar is POpuLAR

[Update: Part 5 will be the last installment as mentioned at the bottom of this blog-post]

Having explored polar maps here, here and here, was it ever a delight to find one of the earliest maps in that same projection! In This Is the World's Largest and Oldest Map, Culture Trip report how David Rumsey recreated a digital copy of a 1587 map from Milan in no less than 60 pieces:

Comparative economics England & Wales since the Middle Ages

My latest post of the 7-part series Toward a rational View of Society on my personal Medium channel, follows my previous maps here of medieval & later drainage of the East Anglia Fens.I expanded a little on the economics in the concluding paragraph in this short presentation.

More polar 'map porn'

[I stole the second half of the title from Reddit group of same name.]

From previous blog posts on Arctic polar maps here and here, let me share two more maps found via my favourite Facebook group Remembering the Franklin Expedition.

Historic climate data revisited - 3 - circum-Arctic update

[Update: Part 4 provides a further update on platforms available to map polar data]

In my previous blog, how many layers can be combined in an arresting polar Arctic view. They show the almost zero overlap of historic and current weather and climatic data. They herald the importance of oceanic climate data going back before 1880, when any weather data get scarce.

"Horses for courses", part II

[Update: a fascinating firsthand report from the discoverers posted on Russell Potter's excellent blog.]

A previous post here contrasted full professional workflows for petroleum geology students, with very simple analytical tools for a businessman looking to ascertain population density. As my subsequent posts show, I have an interest in Antarctic and Arctic maps, history and climate as for example in this Story Map.

Historic climate data revisited - 2 - circum-Arctic

[Update: more data for the Arctic were found here and here when writing a paper

Note: Part 3 adds World Port Index data compared to historic Gazetteer
Follow-on class materials the last two blogposts generated are posted here.
Go also to section 5: Arctic / Antarctica GIS application, of 1000 GIS applications ]

Following on the Antarctic blogpost, I took my lessons-learned to the antipodes for these reasons:

Historic climate data revisited - 1 - circum-Antarctic

[Update 2: this series has full CC BY-SA 3.0 class notes here
Update 1: please see a mirror project for the Arctic in Part 2.]

With ongoing debates whether Antarctic ice in increasing or not, and its effect on climate change, we must avail ourselves of as much data as we can. If historic climate data is at hand, not only do they get scarcer going farther back, but 1880 also marks a time prior to which their reliability falls off.

So having mapped climate data off tall ships captains logs from 1750 to 1850, I wondered how far south they sailed, and how much they augmented historic climate data around the Antarctic?

"Qui peut le plus, peut le moins" or "Horses for courses"

These quips mean that, while we may have great tools for complex workflows, such as Mapping Well Data I'll present as AAPG Visiting Geoscientist in Hungary next month, sometimes it's better to pare it down to its simplest form, such as for a friend "looking to map addresses to [a French geographic subdivision]".

Development of Spatial Grids and...

The Association for Geographic Information Geocom2017 gathered at the Geographical Society in London late last October. Its Lightning Talks showcased new ideas and businesses. I was invited there to challenge attendees "to think about the development of spatial grids and the structure of spatial data models". The presentation itself and thank-you letter were followed by a short report in GIS Professional scanned here:

GDPR revisited

I already wrote about GDPR from the perspective of helping users get started with using Mind Maps. The presentation wraps up with further help from LINQ I partnered with.

My adventure with Storm Fionn

As Storm Fionn wrought chaos in England and Cambridge, here's my adventure in returning a rental car this morning.