Surveying, Mapping and GIS

Some late night discussion with @GeoBabbler (Bill Dollins) and others last night led to this little flight of fancy...  Bill was wondering if there were still any old copies of ArcView 1.0 around.  Being a GIS geezer and a bit of a technology packrat, it turns out I still had a copy.  Scary.  As @FantomPlanet suggested, I reckon I have a bit of a Museum of GIS Antiquity going on - I believe I actually still have ancient copies of MapInfo, Atlas, GeoMedia, AutoCAD Map 1.0 and others floating around, plus quite a bit of hand-coded stuff from the days when COTS GIS was not even widely available.

For folks working with historic deeds and bearing references, there are a number of tools available -

• NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) has an online calculator for magnetic declinations, 1900 to the present: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/Declination.jsp
  
  
• NGDC's online tool to compute the seven individual IGRF magnetic field components: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/IGRFWMM.jsp
  
  
• NGDC's online calculator for historic declinations, back to 1750: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/struts/historicPoint

• http://geomag.usgs.gov/models/
  
  
• http://geomag.org/models/index.html
  
  

EDIT: And an additonal one suggested by Chuck Conley from Canada's Geological Survey

• http://geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/apps/mdcal_e.php

From my colleagues at the Penn State Department of Geography:

Please share with colleagues or students who might be interested. Note that the conference is open to undergraduate as well as graduate students, and Sunday's session (sponsored by our SWIG -- Supporting Women in Geography--chapter) will focus on professional development/networking; former AAG President Jan Monk will be the keynote speaker.

The CFP is available as a PDF document at http://www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries/noBoundaries2009_CFP_Poster_final.pdf

Additional information, including updates as available, can be found at http://www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries

***********************************************

The graduate students of the Penn State DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY invite graduate & undergraduate students to present their research at our annual interdisciplinary conference, which takes place on Penn State's University Park campus Saturday, February 28-Sunday, March 1, 2009.

We welcome submissions on subjects including:

Politics, economics, and international development; Ecology and environmental sciences; History, culture, and society; Gender, race, class, and sexuality; Urban & rural policy and planning; Hazards, vulnerability, and global change; GIS, spatial analysis, and geovisualization.

What unites us (and hopefully you) is an attention to space and place, scale, and connections between the human and physical realms. If your research intersects with any of the above, please join us! (more

information: www.geog.psu.edu/noboundaries)

PAPER SESSIONS

Paper sessions will be organized along common themes with 20 minute timeslots (15 minute presentations followed by a 5 minutes of Q and A).

If you would like to present your research, send a title and abstract (250 words or less) to noboundaries@psu.edu.

POSTER SESSIONS

Graduate and undergraduate students are invited to present posters. Send a title and abstract (250 words or less) to noboundaries@psu.edu.

SPECIAL SESSION: BALANCING ON THE ACADEMIC LADDER—SUPPORTING WOMEN IN

GEOGRAPHY AND BEYOND

Creating supportive spaces for a diversity of women within academia is an ongoing process that involves personal and political action at a variety of scales. This year’s special session of the no)BOUNDARIES conference looks to acknowledge the successes as well as the challenges faced by those striving to create a more supportive academic environment for all women.

We are soliciting papers for panel sessions on the themes of:

- Life in the Department: Departmental Climate; Mentoring; Access to Information; Student Organizations (e.g. Supporting Women in Geography)

- Life Beyond the Department: Publishing; Work/Life Balance; Career Track; Outreach; Networking

These are merely suggested topics; we welcome any and all contributions.

Balancing on the Academic Ladder will consist of workshops as well as panel sessions to encourage the generation and exchange of creative ideas and strategies. Send paper abstracts to noboundaries@psu.edu.

Submission deadline for abstracts is February 1, 2009

A Bard's Epitaph

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,
Wild as the wave,
Here pause-and, thro' the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn the wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name!

Reader, attend! whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit:
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom's root.

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796)

The New York Post has an article today, titled "Treasured Maps" - highlighting the work of Scott Stringer, who is charged with preserving historic maps of New York City - among them, the Randel Farm map, which laid out the grid of Manhattan Island from Houston to 155th St.

These historic maps show many features of streams, wetlands, lakes and other things which have since been reshaped through development - a timeline of the good, bad, and the ugly contained in a map repository going back to 1748.

The world needs more Scott Stringers - he is steward for New York County's maps - I unfortunately hear periodically of plenty of other instances where maps lie crumbling, for lack of proper preservation.

As reported by some news outlets, Lakota activists have sent a letter to the US State Department announcing their intention to secede from the United States.

Along the historic maps vein, another ancient map receiving a lot of press of late is the Tabula Peutingeriana - this one I find tremendously fascinating, being a view of the Roman world of nearly 2000 years ago. As a kid, I grew up in Germany, near Roman ruins of the Limes Germanicus and other features, and as such, I have always been fascinated with all things ancient.

Presently, the Tabula Peutingeriana is being added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register as an important artifact, and, given its extreme fragility, was recently placed on public display for one day in Vienna on November 26th.

The Tabula Peutingeriana is a copy of a Roman cursus publicus, which was a schematic roadmap of roads, cities and other features as developed and used in the Roman Empire. There are no longer any known copies of the original Roman cursus publicus charts, however the Tabula Peutingeriana is believed to have been transcribed from an original one by a thirteenth-century monk in Colmar, and consists of a number of sheets with schematic diagrams showing stops along routes, very similar to a modern-day subway map.


As such, it displaces many features to fit the route rather than attempting to be cartographically correct, and as such, it does not represent latitude and longitude in a conventional sense - instead accomodating the routes and features along them first and foremost, resulting in a very long, skinny map generally oriented west to east.

The geographic extent of the map is staggering, spanning the British Isles to India and Sri Lanka, showing what would have been trade and military routes, the infrastructure and cultural exchange that would have gone on in Roman times.

One of the things that I was playing around with over the weekend is trying to match up features as shown on the Tabula Peutingeriana to modern features - one of the tools I was playing around with is Microsoft Research's MapCruncher for Virtual Earth:

While I wouldn't expect MapCruncher to be able to rubbersheet a schematic map such as the Tabula Peutingeriana to a conventional map, it has nonetheless given me many insights just in being able to match up ancient designations and routes to their modern counterparts in a managed fashion, and it has made for a fun rainy (or snowy, as the case may be) day project.

Reuters is carrying a story about the preservation of the 1507 Martin Waldseemüller World map, the first known to refer to the New World as America.

Some of the individuals cited in the article express their puzzlement at how Waldseemüller was able to portray as much detail and accuracy as he did, given the extremely limited amound of knowledge that is generally believed to have been extant regarding the New World at this time - for example, Vasco Núñez De Balboa had not crossed the Isthmus of Panama to reach the Pacific until 1513, and likewise, Magellan had not rounded the southern tip of South America until 1520, yet these are shown.


Interestingly, many features in this map are reversed in subsequent maps by Waldseemüller.

The map is cited in the article as a 'keystone map', showing a fundamental shift in how Europe viewed the New World. It also raises many questions about how much we really understand geographic awareness and the availability of cartographic information in ancient times.

My own notion is that we sometimes do not give our predecessors enough credit for their knowledge of the world around them.

Captain John Smith's map of New England, dated 1614.

The map was probably drawn by Simon van der Passe, the son of a Dutch engraver, based on one drawn by John Smith. It is very similar to an earlier version which omitted the "New" which prefaces "Plimouth," and does not include Salem. The English colonists who settled in Plymouth in 1620 almost certainly had access to this map. In his Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England, or Any Where (London, 1631), Smith commented wryly: "Now since them called Brownists went, some few before them also having my bookes and maps, presumed they knew as much as they desired . . . " (The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580-1631), ed. by Philip L. Barbour (Univ. Of North Carolina Press, 1986), vol. 3, p. 285.

Reprinted in Deetz and Deetz, The Times of Their Lives, p. 70.

Also featured in this map archive is the following:

The only known map of the town layout, as drawn by William Bradford in 1620. From the site,

William Bradford's sketch of the town of Plymouth.

The Bradford sketch, entitled "The meersteads & garden plots of which came first layed out 1620" is the only known map of the original town layout. The sketch is bound into the front of a manuscript volume entitled "Plimouths Great Book of Deeds of Lands Enrolled from Ano 1627 to Ano 1651." The first part of the volume is in the handwriting of Governor William Bradford, as is the map. The volume now comprises Vol. 12 , Deeds, &c. Vol. 1 1620-1651 of The Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, edited by Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer (William White, 1855-61; AMS Press, 1968).

John A. Goodwin, in his The Pilgrim Republic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920; Kraus reprint 1970), has extended the plan to include his interpretation of the position of occupants on the north side of the street, and of the street in relation to the harbor and the fort.

The original Bradford sketch is reprinted in Deetz and Deetz, The Times of Their Lives, p. 66.

Finally, from Wikipedia's entry on the Plymouth Colony, a map showing the geographic extent of the Plymouth Colony:

Mike Berry found this interesting advertising insert card in a collection of advertising images from 1850-1920 housed at Duke University - these are from from the W. Duke Sons Tobacco Company. This series is from "50 Scenes of Perilous Occupations". The exhibit places Surveying between Circus Knife Throwing and Indian Scout...

Just got this photo emailed to me from friends at PSLS:



Here I am at the 2007 Pennsylvania Surveyor's Conference with Patrick Lee, who was there as a re-enactor performing biographical sketches told as Daniel Boone.

It was a thoroughly wonderful evening - Mr. Lee is a talented and enjoyable speaker. He has also graciously sent me several leads for researching one of my early Searcy ancestors, who was an associate of Daniel Boone's.

I was able to enjoy some time at the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors' 2007 Conference. It was great to see many old friends again, such as the great folks at PSLS that put the conference on, the Penn State Wilkes-Barre Surveying faculty (they have an excellent program there - I was fortunate to be able to tag along as an observer in the last ABET visit to Penn State, and have known Tom Seybert since my own days at Penn State as a student), as well as many fellow surveyors, PAMAGIC members, POBers and other folks - the conversation was great, I got a lot of input and thoughts on Continuing Professional Competency, data standards and geodesy, and many other things swirling around in my life of late.

My focus was to attend some of the GPS sessions, and though I was tied up with many other things, I was actually able to attend some, such as the "Horizontal Control Survey with GPS " session by GPS guru Dr. James P. Reilly, and the "Static GPS Post-Processing" session by Brian Naberezny, of PSU and University of Maine.

I also greatly enjoyed the excellent presentation put on by Patrick Lee, as a Daniel Boone re-enactor. As a pioneer in his westward movements, Daniel Boone was involved in surveying and land grants - and some of my own Searcy ancestors were colleagues of Boone, and were also surveyors in early Kentucky.

Patrick Lee as Daniel Boone