"Something happened on my way north from Londonium..."

 ... said Caïus, "this young noble went charging by in his chariot, but 20 milia north between the tumulus and the circular fort ruins, I had to retrieve him from the bushes... His chariots had crashed going straight and missing the jog in the road". "Jog in the road?" asks Severus. "Yes", replies Caïus, "the road is misaligned NW and SW at that point, and there's a 20 pedes section at a sharp angle joining them". "How odd" retorts Severus, "We build perfect roads... why that misalignment? Did the Gods have fun and push them aside to catch speeding charioteers? Surely the indigenous, if there are any, couldn't sabotage a road: they barely build huts of reeds, never mind challenging our glorious engineering... Ave, Caesar!", he salutes, "I must go." [Click images to enlarge]

Fun with puzzle maps

 Look what I found!

Having taken a vacation from work and social media, I found a puzzle box in my late Dad’s old office, while visiting my Mum:

The Puzzle of the Plates

Spilhaus Repeating World Maps

1985 American Geophysical Union 

Created by Athelstan  Spilhaus

"So long and thanks for the maps"

"So long and thanks for all the fish, I meant maps (apologies to Douglas Adams)" was the last post in my #30DayMapChallenge reported below, not incl. an extra one at the end. As my life situation has changed, however, this proved to be prophetic: I'm withdrawing from social media, activism and geo work until I sort my life out. It’s been a pleasure participating in mappy adventures with y’all. Ta for now.

Satellite data help for local housing issue

 The #30DayMapChallenge Day 23 challenge is "GHSL data", here is the section in the story map that will chronicle the map challenge when it's finished:

Global Human Settlement  for Northstowe controversial development NW of Cambridge UK, monitoring housing probability (GHS-BUILT-S2, 2018) and housing footprint (GHSL-ESM, 2015) against Esri 2020 Land Cover map extract with OpenStreetMap detailed base-map. Various blended overlays 'bake' the layers into a screen pattern allowing to compare and contrast past built areas vs. currently probably built against submissions. 

More map art

A few years ago I used Charlie Frye's online lesson Explore future climate projections to learn how to use NetCDF and map temperature regimes - it's shown below in Patterson & Savaric's Equal Earth Projection. It became the basis for carbon emissions map just updated in the last blog post.

Carbon emissions reloaded

[ Updates:  watch the updated bubble map video wrapping this all up at the bottom! ]

Late 2019 I wrote in A tale of two maps: 

LSE’s Leslie Sklair asked me recently to produce carbon emission snapshots for an upcoming book. I had already mapped CDIAC’s CO2 emissions since 1751, I updated with BP Stat. Review current data, and I created in Esri web mapping platform some dynamic counterparts to Carbon Atlas’ static maps.

 Those 2018 data were recently updated up to 2020, and further fuels listed by CDIAC were added to create this map, using Esri's improved web mapping:

Return East Anglia Peatlands to being carbon sinks

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20

[ Update 5: Community Interest Company re-engagement is here

Update 4: actual Fenlanders interviewed in this fab blog post

Update 3: peatland restoration by numbers, Indonesian example

Update 2: soil degradation and climate change masterclass, TEDtalk pointers

Update: added Why we should all be obsessed with Peatlands at the end of the story map below ]

No. 20! Isn't it fitting that chronicling East Anglia challenges & opportunities w.r.t. climate emergency - risk of flooding, sea level rise,  vulnerability indices and now pandemic - uncovered the greatest opportunity yet: returning local peatlands from carbon emitters to original carbon sinks could dwarf any individual effort to mitigate CO2 emissions, currently the major driver of climate change.

Sea Level Rise Maps #reloaded

[ Update 2: at bottom is the comprehensive water web map that followed this...

Update 1: near the end of the story map, see how you can style your own DEM tiles ]

 East Anglia Flood Defences Final showcased in a story map the entire flooding infrastructure framework for the region, both from rising sea levels and risk of flooding, complete w flood defence infrastructure.

Online discussions in the wake of the IPCC 2021 report broadened that scope back to an original posting almost two years ago Sea level rise models show ins&outs of climate change science. Here is that update expanding to England and NW Europe, wrapping in all the lessons learned along the way. 

'Emo' vs. 'Goth' map looks

Recently updated this story map Maps like 3D Prints: Emo or goth? A map tour of special effects - adding to existing Ice Mountain hillshade style (augmented with Misting - the Emo part), a Sunrise Hack (in fact more like sunset - the Goth part) - all John Nelson's on Esri Living Atlas Terrain layers.

"Start me up" reloaded

[ Update: watch this creepy reprise by Rolling Stones & Boston Dynamics on the 40th anniversary of the Tattoo You album ]

The 25th anniversary of Win95 launch reminded me of the cringy launch party livestreamed where I was then in Calgary. What struck me was in Rolling Stones' lyrics including "you make grown men cry" in the launch party was clipped in later adverts...