Maps can be a tool in the defense of Indigenous communities against extractive industries.
Canadian Centre for Architecture; Grant Tigner, painter. Seagrams Limited, publisher. The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project, in The St. Lawrence Seaway: The Realization of a Mighty Dream, 1954.
Historically, western corporate maps have been privileged over Indigenous ones. But given the essential debate of territory in resource conflicts, maps are a crucial tool.
Do you know where you are right now?
Ana de Sousa/shutterstock.com
Google, Amazon and other powerful groups are renaming American cities and neighborhoods. That may make the area more appealing to newcomers – but, in many cases, residents aren’t happy.
Canadian researchers have mapped smart city technologies throughout the country. The interactive map is intended to inform urban residents of the locations of technologies that may affect privacy.
A Landsat view of Mount St. Helens in 2011.
U.S. Geological Survey
Red Dead Redemption 2 has been criticised for its portrayals of violence, but it could also be teaching players the lost art of reading a map.
The vast amounts of data from more than 650 Earth observation satellites are transforming how we see and shape urban landscapes.
Pitney Bowes Australia courtesy PSMA
The map will help uncover real experiences of gender inequality in public places, from sports facilities to public transport, community services and infrastructure, to simply walking down the street.
In contrast to common perceptions, Antarctic seafloor communities are highly diverse. This image shows a deep East Antarctic reef with plenty of corals, sponges and brittlestars. Can you spot the octopus?
Australian Antarctic Division
Life on the Antarctic seafloor is surprisingly diverse – and half of the species live nowhere else on Earth. Now scientists can accurately map this unique biodiversity.
A scene from Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan.
Brian Tomaszewski
Maps can be an invaluable tool in a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis. A pilot project trained Syrian refugees at a Jordan camp to create their own.
Dust storms in the Gulf of Alaska, captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite.
NASA
There are more satellites than ever before, orbiting Earth and collecting data that’s crucial for scientists. Why do some nations choose not to share that data openly?
An aerial view, using drones, could make a big difference to mapping land across Africa.
Reuters/Adriane Ohanesian
Quirky tourists, heads up! The old way to calculate geographical centers of U.S. states is out of date. To set course for a state’s true center, read up on the azimuthal equidistant projection.
Worldmapper.org / Sasi Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan).
Kim Dovey, The University of Melbourne and Elek Pafka, The University of Melbourne
We’re still in the early days of understanding how cities work. But we do know that creative, healthy and productive cities have certain things in common – and it’s all to do with their ‘urban DMA’.
Some parts of Antarctica’s Totten Glacier are more stable than others.
UWA/ICECAP
New mapping shows how Antarctica’s huge Totten Glacier has retreated far inland, raising sea levels by more than a metre. Rising temperatures could trigger it to do so again.
Route mapping apps such as Strava are popular with cyclists, but you need to protect your privacy.
Shutterstock/antb
If you use one of the many apps to map your walking, jogging or cycling route then you could be giving away information that could be abused by others.
Indonesia wants to restore its degraded peatlands. But first it needs to know how to map them.
EPA/Bagus Indahono
Last year, fires burned 2 million hectares of peatlands in Indonesia. The country wants to restore them. But first it needs to know the extent and depth of its peatlands.
The biggest state has a brand new map.
Geologic Map of Alaska
On printed maps, piling on the detail risks obscuring the meaning. This new digital map is really more of a database from which users can create different versions that match their own interests.