Cartography

Cartography has always been around, because all that is needed is a pencil and some paper. There have been many famous cartographers over the years. Cartography was first designed when people still thought that the earth was flat; ancient people designed these maps to understand trade routes. They did this so they could get delicacies quicker, and so bandits would not steal their food. The first big map makers were the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Ptolemy is the most famous map maker, and was Greek. He made the very first map of the world, and it is because of him that Cartography is such a popular art. It seems that at the same time, the Chinese and the Indians were working on mapping the solar system as they knew it (Sen Nag 2018). When they first drew maps, they didn’t have a compass, which made cartography extremely challenging. A compass works because it is drawn by the magnetic pull of the North Pole. There is a magnetic North that pulls the compass away from true north and it is in Canada (Ashford). The magnetic North Pole has shifted over 600 miles over the past century (Ashford).

Cartography can usually be split into two different categories, General Cartography and Thematic Cartography. General Cartography involves maps that are meant for the general public (Sen Nag 2018). These are usually produced in a series, with each map covering a certain part of their area of study. For instance, the United Kingdom Ordnance Survey are complete maps of the United Kingdom (Sen Nag 2018). The other type of Cartography is Thematic Cartography, which deals with more specific geographic fields of study (Escobar 2010). These maps are usually meant for a select group of people, like scientists. A great tool for General Cartography is Geographical Information Systems. These are online mapping databases like CalTopo and the point of these are so people can explore the areas in the United States closer and more in depth. As well as having two different types of cartography, there are two main maps. These two are Topographical and Topological maps. Topographical maps are generally highly detailed and quantitative, and usually focus on elevation. These maps have a key and focus on railroads, roads, man made features, forests, drainage patterns among other types of symbolized objects (Sen Nag 2018). Topological maps are very simplified drawings or diagrams of different areas. A good example of these Topological maps are the London Tube map, a beautiful feat of cartographic knowledge (Sen Nag 2018).

GIS, or Geographic Information System, is the main body of knowledge for cartography. It has been greatly developed and enhanced over the years. It is now free and widely available to the public, even though it has been around for only 57 years. It all started in 1962, when

Roger Tomlinson founded GIS after working on CLI or Canada land inventory.

We’ve come a long way with our geographical systems, one of the most simplistic is a website known as Caltopo. Learning this site and the ins and outs isn’t too difficult but the first thing I need to do is find where it is I want to map out. I can do this by typing in the area of coordinates to a specific place in the search bar at the top of the screen. Then I need to apply a filter to convey the data. It has many versatile options from precipitation to the shade. And this is done by either adding one of the preset layers or adding additional layers by hovering the cursor over the “scanned area” number. Then check off the layers I want and then I’m good to go.

Bibliography: Ashford, Molika. “How Does a Compass Work?” LiveScience, Purch, https://www. livescience.com/32732-how-does-a-compass-work.html. Escobar, Fredrico. “Thematic Cartography.” ISTE, 2010 http://www.iste.co.uk/book. php?id=361. Sen Nag, Oishimaya. “What Is Cartography?” WorldAtlas, Aug. 17, 2018, worldatlas.com/ what-is-cartography.html.

The first thing we did when we arrived at the site study, was find a good location to draw our maps. After we did that we got out our Garmin GPS, and we would turn it on to get the information. This information was vital to our site study. The information we get is the elevation, true north, and the coordinates of our site study. A key tool is the compass rose, because it is important to orient the map to true north. The compass rose also provides a sense of place. After we get those pieces of data down onto our soon to be maps, we then decide what exactly we want to draw. We also have to decide which person wants to take which map view. The map views consist of satellite, birds eye, cut through, and street view. We then make a rough draft of the map with

just pencils, this part is tedious. We have to do this so we can make edits to our maps later. We then start to color it in with appropriate colors.

After we finish our map, we start gathering our data. We go to all of the different scientists to gather all of the data required to be on our map, and then we make sure we get the best data. After we get all of this data, we added finishing touches to our maps. Then we leave the site study. The Cartographers have little time to not focus and joke around. In Graveyard Fields at the lower falls I heard the water rushing by as I drew my map. I encountered a bunch of challenges in the field. One of them was rain.This is really bad for the Cartographers, because our maps get completely soaked and ruined. Our whole purpose is to convey the maps in a nice easy simple way, so that people can visualize our site studies and the data collected. The most important tool that we used was our drawing notebooks. We need these drawing notebooks, because they help us get down our data, and because they are just perfect to right on. They are also slightly bumpy so that there is texture to drawings. To collect data efficiently and effectively one will want to start by drawing a picture, but make sure there is room for data to be added. Once done with the art aspect the most crucial part of the data collection comes in, interviewing other scientists about their data. The job requires needing to talk to everyone and make sure they are represented in one way or another on the map.

In this job I had a unique perspective, because I had the opportunity to step back and look at the big picture. Take for instance Goose Creek State Park. The Geologists had one piece of data which might indicate to them that the environment is pretty plain and uninteresting while the ecosystem had very intriguing Water Chemistry. Our job as a whole is to combine all of this data, so that we can view the area as a whole. We gathered all of the data so we could draw conclusions from the site studies. These are the methods for the Cartographers.

We traveled to the Smoky Mountains and collected data atop Black Balsam Knob. We found that there was no water on it because it is the Continental Divide which means that the water will fall on the sides. Then it will go into the Atlantic or Pacific ocean. This leads to the soil being abnormally dry. This also means there aren’t many large animals that live up there. The main type wildlife up there are plants and insects, more specifically Swallowtail Butterflies, Ladybugs, Purple Stemmed Angelica, and Mountain Ash. Since we were 6,240 above sea level we believe that might affect the rapidly changing wind speed as it ended up at 7.4 mph. As a Cartographer I had to find a way to draw recognizable trees. After that we hiked down to Graveyard Fields where we found copious amounts of salamanders and

Mayfly larva. The Mayfly larva indicates that the water was very healthy. All the rocks have traces of quartz in the rocks. There were 2 types of soil, one with a clay texture and the other was sandy. Neither of them had nitrate, but the Ph of the soil was perfect. There was no wind but it was still 78 degrees fahrenheit.

Lake Fontana had a plain ecosystem but we did have a multitude of different small animals. These included a centipede, an earthworm, a spider, and a butterfly. The soil near the water, can’t grow any plants, so the only foliage around were Virginia Pine. They grow in clay like soil, atop a layer of sediment.

Our Goose Creek site study was packed with biodiversity. The foliage around consist of Loblolly pine, and Swampbay grass. The animals included a family of white tailed deer, a Screech, Barred, and a Great Horned Owl. There were also blue shell crabs, and old man’s beard lichen. There was also water that was brackish which occurs when fresh water is mixed with salt water.

Finally, we drove to Fort Macon, a beach on the Atlantic Ocean. It was 22 degrees Celecius and the waves where larger than usual. The water had an almost perfect level of Ph and a large amount of nitrates. We also saw many sand crabs in the dollar weed or sand grass. The wind was a steady 13 mph with rain.

Being Cartographers we need to capture the earth and the wildlife that dwells on it’s crust. There have been many challenges that we’ve had to face, like at Goose creek deciding what to record with an overflow of data coming in. Or in Graveyard fields where we had to depict a 3D object in a way it could be recognized. We need to make these decisions to try and accurately depict the Earth.

As Cartographers our job is to put all of the site studies data on to a coherent map that the general public can understand. Our maps are one of the few pieces of data that can stand alone. We have to ask the question that I now know by heart, what data have you collected? What that question means is so much more, it means what can I write on my map. These maps cause reflection and cause us to draw conclusions. Whether we do that with the Chemists data, or the Meteorologists data it doesn’t matter. We didn’t just gather this data just so we could hang it up on the wall, we gathered this data so we could understand more about the ecosystem.

When we were on top of Black Balsam Knob, we learned that there is no water on top of there, and there are only birds and insects on top of the mountain. This means that anywhere with very few animals means that there probably isn’t much water. When I was on Black Balsam Knob, I could look out and see for miles and miles across the beautiful landscape, we were 6,000 feet above sea level, and on the continental divide.When we were in Graveyard Fields, we discovered a bunch of Salamanders and Mayflies. This meant that the water was very clean. When we were in shade filled Graveyard fields, it felt way cooler than when we were on top of sunny Black Balsam Knob. Even though it was 5 degrees hotter in Graveyard Fields. There was a waterfall hundreds of feet tall towering over our rock filled pool we were gathering our data in. The water was very cold, which meant that the animals would have enough oxygen to breathe and would not become smaller. If the water was hotter it would be opposite. We discovered that the closer we got to the coast the animals became more abundant.

At Lake Fontana there were not many fish, because the water was almost too cold for fish to live there. At the bottom of the lake the water reaches 45 degrees fahrenheit. That will kill all the fish. That is why the fish that live there are really small. Lake Fontana had a very fascinating and sedimentary soil. After Lake Fontana the next site study was Goose Creek State Park. That area was full of wildlife, we found over 15 species there in our very short stay. At Fort Macon, when we were on the beach, we discovered 6 species and a lot of plants. This leads us to believe that the coast is lively and full of life while the mountains have less population and species richness. This means that the coast is a lively area full of animals. This leads us to believe that the ocean has more species and hosts a more diverse environment. The coast is the better area is for supporting more animals.

Some future tips for the next several years of Field Ecology Cartographers are going to be addressed in this paper. When a Cartographer goes out on their very first site study, they should remember to bring at minimum legal sized paper. They will also need colored pencils and a sharpener and if they forget they should use the colored pencils as not to completely dull the tips, the colors they should bring are yellow, grey, green, blue, brown, and they should bring many varieties of these. They should avoid getting just data from

one science group. The job of a cartographer is to gather all of the data and put it into a coherent map. If a cartographers friend is in a group, they shouldn’t spend the entire time talking to them and not getting any data from any other science groups. I always looked for connections in the field between my maps and what I saw and the data that other scientists collected.

There are a lot of mistakes that can be made when working as a Cartographer and this is a guide on how to help future Cartographers not walk into one of these various pitfalls. Something that I struggled with was not leaving enough room to put data and this led me to writing on my picture. This is not good as it makes the picture worse and makes the text hard to interpret. Another thing that I can’t overstate is to keep the work organized and don’t fall behind on any of the coordinates or things of the sort. When I was in the field I made sure that I got as much data as possible. These are the tips to make the Field Ecology trip even better.