With Lonesome George an international icon for conservation has died (although there are still chances that his subspecies of the Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis abingdoni) will continue to exist). The extinction rate of endangered species however remains high and some say may even be the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Less controversially it can be stated that the current extinction rates are higher than one would expect without humankind’s influence, and that more action to preserve the environment is needed. Continue reading
Tag Archives: map
Mercator revisited
The 5th of March 2012 marks the 500th birthday of Gerardus Mercator, the creator of the world map that profoundly changed our views of the world. He was not the only one who worked on a conformal map projection in the 16th century, which was still an age of exploration and discovery. But he was the first to do the maths right and complete a world map that allowed ships to navigate around the planet by its ability to represent lines of constant course. That makes the Mercator projection a milestone in the history of cartography and remains one of the central map projections up to the present day. Continue reading
New York City: Mapping the melting pot
New York is the host city to this year’s AAG Annual Meeting. For my plenary presentation at the Population Specialty Group session I therefore decided to add a little bit of a local touch to the talk by including a new map of New York City in the slides. Continue reading
British News of the World 2011
According to the British Guardian, 2011 was the year of the news overload, with many people perceiving the year’s news from around the world being extremely significant in manifold ways. “There is no news“, as reportedly broadcast by the BBC an a day in 1930, is an unlikely in our media age, but whether last year’s news were more significant than usual remains another question. It may just as well be a proof of an increasingly connected world where news become ever more instant and people demand new news virtually every second – the news overload of 2011 may therefore also be a result of the overload of news produced by the media (and demanded by the population). Continue reading
London in Maps
London 2012 means a busy year for the British capital. Not only are the 2012 Olympics coming up, but also will London be part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, and on the more serious side, the current economic crisis will continue to have considerable impact on the people living in a city that is heavily reliant on the global financial markets. Although London is “by far the richest part of Britain and the engine of the national economy [, yet] it also has the highest rates of poverty and inequality” (more on these issues are highlighted in the latest release of London’s Poverty Profile). In the dawn of all these events, Londoners are also electing a new mayor and assembly to decide whom they want to see in the driving seat for the next four years.
The world of cartography and maps is paying its own contribution to this city with the London Mapping Festival. Continue reading
Material flows: Global resource extraction
Climate change as discussed at the climate talks in Durban is just one of the complex impact that humans have on the natural environment. The history of humanity is closely linked to benefiting from (or exploiting) the natural environment in order to improve living conditions. “Stone, Iron, Bronze and Steel Ages – the names of these periods have been chosen according to the main materials in use” Continue reading