Tweets dealing with Japan, GIS, and Cartography, tweeted on March 21, 2011:

Esri Esri
How much did Japan shift? Hardest hit area 17 feet. http://bit.ly/shiftmap #jpquake #esri #usgs #nasa

GEOpdx Justin C. Houk
Radiation visualizations paint a different picture of Japan http://j.mp/dDYXR0

geometrus geometrus
USGS poster about the earthquake in Japan (JPG) http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2011/20110311.php

rob_earthware Rob Davis
by geospatialnews
@geospatialnews See the build up of #quake sequences leading to the March #tsunami in this interactive map http://bit.ly/fYT0zV

GOOD GOOD
Map: see #Japan get battered by 572 #earthquakes in eight days http://su.pr/73f3kR

wblau Wolfgang Blau
Map: The size of the area that has been devastated by the tsunami and the earthquake in Japan, compared to Germany: http://bit.ly/eDL7OD

AifricsWorld AifricsWorld
World map showing many #nuclear plants in #earthquake zones, the red areas indicating the most dangerous> http://bit.ly/fMNztR #japan

Did I miss any good ones?

A new map for Loch Lomond National Park in Scotland was apparently too creative for the locals to stomach. The story is here. (For those of us not in Scotland, I finally figured out that “giro” means something like “scrounger” – a giro is an unemployment check in Britain.) They also named places after current park employees.

This one has nothing to do with maps but goes with the topic: @BillNigh on twitter said today, “Ice cream with pretzels and potato chips embedded in it? I don’t know how you pull that off successfully, but good luck with that.”

Firstly, I’m not so sure about that last post. The order of a choropleth legend seems trivial to me, for one. For another, as someone on twitter pointed out, we are mostly used to seeing the high value on the bottom and as someone else on twitter mentioned, low to high is a common way to present numbers.

Second, the New York Times has an interesting article, “Freelance Scholars: A Nomadic Lot” that talks about one scholar’s decision to quit her professorship to move to Rome and build a cartographic history of the urban development of Rome. She wrote a book on the subject titled The Waters of Rome.

Third, the GISCI has updated their homepage to include information about the poster contest. Don’t forget, submissions are allowed all during March, with the last day being March 31.

Reprinted from the GISCI newsletter:

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We are pleased to announce our first annual map contest!  We are seeking anyone who can incorporate our existing database of nearly 5,000 GISPs and generate a high quality cartographic representation of our member distribution.  If you are up for a map design challenge, please enter!

Prizes: 1st Place – $500, 2nd Place – $250, 3rd Place – $100, People’s Choice – $500, plus honorable mentions.  Each winner will also have their initial certification fee waived if the application is submitted within one year of the date the winners are announced.  Current GISPs will have their renewal fees waived at their next recertification date.

Judges

• Roger Tomlinson, GISP – Father of GIS
• Gretchen Peterson, GISP – Renowned cartographer
• Kirk Eby, GISP – Treasurer of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society

Please visit our website for more details.  Submissions will be accepted from March 1-31, 2011.

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Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a link to the “more details” referenced above. If you have the link please share it in the comments. When I saw the title they gave me – renowned cartographer – I have to say I was mighty pleased. (Nothing like a little flattery to get someone to judge a contest!)

There has been some criticism of GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design, all from academic-types, who contend that the book does not provide enough references to cartographic literature. I’d like to respond to that here:

If cartographic literature were compelling enough to cite then why has GIS cartographic design been so LACKING for all these years?

Okay, so there is some useful information in the traditional cartographic literature that would serve the GIS professional but they obviously aren’t getting the message. Why is that? Maybe a different mode of communication would be helpful, I said. Maybe a more been-there, done-that approach would be more successful. Maybe an intuitive system by someone who knows what it is like to try to make maps on their own would have more appeal. And those were the ideas I kept in mind throughout the research and writing phases of the book creation process.

For those in the trenches of map-production this book has useful advice that makes their jobs easier and makes their products better. If there had been such a book 12 years ago, my own initial cartographic attempts would have been much more successful.