Map Find - Bivariate

I found a good one. This one is about Sasquatch. It's easy to read and understand. My main takeaway is that Sasquatch has evolved to live in many different areas, but hates most of the great plains. Joshua Stevens made it. He is a cartographer and PhD student at PennState. This was an inset map of a bigger dot density map of similar look/feel that shows the spatial distribution of sightings much better.

Final Project draft

Found 2 Geodetic markers

Found 2 marker. I have no idea why the images are rotated. I used NOAA's Geodetic Mark locator map website to find them. I walked directly to both of them. I looked for two others in the area with no luck.

Lab 10

Lab 10 ended better than it started. Trying to figure out what to do with 2 sets of data took longer than than it needed. I ended up just picking something on going with it. I think the map is easy to look at and the proportional symbol/choropleth match works well. I used a complimentary color wheel to pick blue and orange. The legend was something I tooled with for a while. There might be a best way to lay that out, but i tried several and they all looked equally awkward. In any event, it's done.

Lab 9

Lab 9 started well, but then I got going with the dots. I'm not sure if the size came out right. The colors and background were easy and I was satisfied with the text, but the dot size was questionable. I think 400 people per dot was over kill because doesn't represent density as accurately as if i were to use less people per dot. In any event, it's done. Next Lab.

Map Find - Dot Density

I picked this map because it's election day. If you are an intern working for a candidate you should be looking at maps like this instead of bothering me as I try to get in and out of the grocery store without being accosted. This map shows you where the voter turnout is in Virginia. As an intern, you should be accosting the people in central and southwestern Virginia. We clearly don't have a problem with voter turnout in NOVA, or Richmond, or Hampton Roads. Each dot represents 30 vote casts and I see a tons of single dots in other places than here in Fairfax.  The Bull Elephant posted this map, but you can thank the Center for Politics in Charlottesville for doing the plotting.

Map Find - Isopleth

I took this map from the Virginia Places website. It's run by the GMU geography professor that teaches the Geography of Virginia course. I picked it because it makes me think of how much field work had to be done to make this map at all accurate.  The map says it is generalized, but this still takes some time to process. It's clean and not a complete mess that other geology maps tend to be.

Mapping Conspiracy Theories in Virginia

My final project will be a map of government and military conspiracy theories in Virginia. Even though I work in the Intelligence community, I still have a general interest in some of the unique missions being carried out on some of the military installations I visit. I also think the location of these installations is almost as interesting as their mission. The locations will be the main focus of the map.

 The audience is mostly me, but I think the conspiracy theorists websites I have been data mining from will appreciate my effort in plotting the location they are so curious about. The locations are going to be what makes this map interesting to look at. They are often right on the other side of the fence from major roads and neighborhoods, while some are deep in the woods or on the top of a mountain.

The content for this map will be derived from multiple sources including conspiracy theorists blogs, .gov and .mil websites, and my own experience with some of the sites in question. Reading the conspiracy blogs turned up suspicious sites I didn’t even know about.  The map will show how saturated Virginia is with secretive military and civilian installations. I will plot their location along with a photo or satellite image of the location along with it’s suspected mission. The base map will be from the ESRI ArcMap library.

This map requires a fair amount of combing through conspiracy theorists blogs to find out what locations they are theorizing about.  When I find a post with a location I might be able to use, I turn to Google search and Google Earth to see it and to find the public release statement…if there is one. In most cases, the military discloses the mission of each instillation and sometimes the blogger refuse to accept the statement published. 

The challenge will be to decide what content to include and what to discard because there are so many locations the conspiracy theorists are questioning. Anyone can be a Imagery Analyst with the free Google Earth application and some of them feel the need to blog about their suspicions. The other challenge will be design. There are not a lot of unclassified examples of government map designs to reference. I made a rough illustrator sketch to brainstorm what I want the map to look like.

Conspiracy Theory Blog Posts

Tyranny Training Base

Secret Detention Facility in the swamps of NOVA

Secret Government Facilities in Virginia 

Virginia POW Camp That Doesn't Exist

  

Map Brainstorm

Lab 8

SMERG is bad and this is what came to mind. Probably too dark, and probably not enough contrast, but I like it and thats why it's finished and published. Plotting the lines took almost as much time as making the smoke.  If the fake SERG data is correct, then this is a very accurate map.