1.5: Geography is a Way to Communicate Information

Geography is a Way to Communicate Information – Cartography the Jedi Language

Because you are reading this, you have some command of the rules that govern the English language. You no doubt can write in this language as well, another indication of your textual literacy: i.e. you can communicate with a written language. You probably are reasonably adept at communicating with numbers as well – so you are numerate or you have numeracy skills. Without these two key skill sets, you would not be in college. Geographers must be literate and numerate, but we also work to heighten our ability to communicate with non-textual, visual imagery, and/or graphics as well. Geographers who can both “read” graphics and create “readable” graphics have graphicacy skills and are considered graphicate. Persons who can read and create legible, communicative maps, are considered cartographicate and possess cartographica skills. Mapmakers are called cartographers.

"Map of Science" by Better Than Bacon is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Cartography is the science and art of map-making and it is the specialized language of the geographer. The ability to communicate vast amounts of information, and/or ideas using maps is an excellent skill to develop. In the last decade, thanks to Google Maps/Earth, GPS and a massive increase in the value placed on spatial data by the government, military and private enterprise, cartographica has blossomed as a valuable type of literacy.

It makes sense that maps have re-entered the public’s consciousness in recent years. Besides the explosion in spatial data available with which cartographers can create fun or informative maps, changes in the pace of our lives as well the tendency for us to be overwhelmed by data in the digital age have made well-constructed maps and graphics a welcome coping mechanism. Maps allow our brains to rapidly process far greater amounts of data than we could if we encountered the same data as text or in a massive spreadsheet. Maps allow us to see patterns and processes that would be difficult to discern otherwise.

Although some folks find maps innately easy to read, maps confuse others. Moreover, it can be very challenging to author a legible map. Good cartography is harder than it looks. Some colleges feature full programs in Cartography. Professional cartography is a great career path for the talented few who master this Jedi art. All geographers, even those whose specialty is not cartography, should endeavor to become reasonably adept at making maps. Thanks to GIS, most people who know GIS can create a tolerably good map using the software’s built-in cartography templates.

Patterson, Tom. "Outside the Bubble: Real-world Mapping Advice for Students." Cartographic Perspectives
65 (2010): 7-15.

"Urban Cartography at SPUR" by Eric Fischer is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Good Cartography?

Throughout this text, you should notice there are varying styles of cartography, with varying degrees of quality. This is purposeful. It affords students and instructors opportunities to discuss the communicative power of cartography. Look for maps that communicate effectively, and for those that do not. Hopefully, the author has indicated examples of poor cartography. Consider elements of color, scale, projection, and text that work to enhance or degrade the power of maps in this volume to communicate clearly and effectively.

Core Concepts

In addition to the core elements of the discipline of geography (observation, epistemology, methodology, and cartography) several basic concepts are useful to know to develop basic proficiency as a spatial thinker. These concepts appear throughout the text, so you should try to learn them well early in the semester.

Figure 1-5: Greenwich, England-The author- an admitted geo-geek-stands happily astride the Greenwich Meridian making zero degrees longitude. GPS measurements indicate this stripe should be a few yards to the east

Location

Location is the most basic concept in geography. Each physical object has an absolute location. There are a variety of strategies for expressing or communicating your absolute location. If you order a pizza, you will provide the delivery person your address. The property address system as we know it here in the United States was created by the government to help the postal service deliver letters and packages many years ago. It is a generally logical system, and most Americans have learned the logic behind it well enough to navigate their city, even without help from a GPS. If you were to travel to other countries, you may be surprised to find that some, like Japan, have very different address systems than the one used in the United States.

Want to know more? Check out the following links!

Mapping the Future: Cartography Stages a Comeback – Cool article from Wired Magazine about mapping in the digital age and the growing demand for geographers and cartographers.

Another common system for expressing absolute location uses a grid geographic coordinate system. The most commonly used grid system is based on lines of latitude to express distance from the equator, and longitude to express distance from the Prime Meridian, an imaginary line running through a suburb of London England. Grid coordinate systems were devised thousands of years ago to aid in navigation and map-making. There are many dozens of coordinate systems, but the most popular system used today was invented by Eratosthenes, vastly improved by Ptolemy and formalized into a modern functional system by an Englishman, Sir George Airy in 1851. Many people own smartphones capable of calculating the phone’s location (latitude and longitude) much like a global positioning system (GPS). Smartphones, and GPS devices (that use satellite data rather than cell towers or Wi-Fi) use the basic logic of the ancient coordinate system to help us find our way.

Another common concept used to express location is cultural region. Each absolute location, like your address, can be mapped as a point. Points are almost always situated within one or more containing locations known as regions. Your address is on a street/road – which is a linear region expressed as a line on a map. Your address is also (at least in the US) within a ZIP code, a county, a state, a country, etc. These locations are two-dimensional regions, so geographers map these regions using polygons on paper or in a GIS.

The location and boundaries of polygonal regions can be mapped using several different strategies. One strategy for designating an area as a “region” is to identify a characteristic that is common among multiple adjacent locations. So, for example, there’s a part of the United States where most of the people are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So, you could call that group of locations a region – perhaps the “Mormon Region”. It is a region because locations within the region generally share a common trait or a characteristic. The general uniformity of this characteristic among these locations is perhaps why this kind of region is called a formal region. Sometimes the formal region is homogenous (same) across the region, and sometimes a formal region will feature a core where the trait is more pronounced and a periphery where the trait is less common. That would be the case with the “Mormon Region”.

Figure U.S by percent Mormon. Red areas on the map, because they have a higher percentage of Mormons, could be delineated as a formal region.

Another way of grouping locations together as a region is by identifying a shared relationship among multiple locations that are near one another. These kinds of regions are called functional regions because they function together in some fashion. For example, a network of radio stations that all feature broadcasts of Cincinnati Reds baseball games would form a functional region of Reds baseball broadcasts. You could map that region. If there was a headquarters, or a “flagship station” for Cincinnati Reds radio broadcast stations, then some geographers would call that a nodal region. The node is the point that functions to connect, and often control, the other points in the network that are subsidiary to the node.

These concepts are not mutually exclusive. Some regions are both a functional and formal region simultaneously. For example, Texas is a formal region because people who call themselves “Texans” largely live within the borders of Texas. They share a common trait. At the same time, all people living within the borders of Texas pay taxes that wind up in Austin – the node of a functional region that constitutes the State of Texas.

Even less well defined are vernacular regions because these regions exist mostly in the imagination of groups or even individuals. It is much more difficult to identify the boundaries of vernacular regions on a map because opinions about boundaries often vary wildly for vernacular regions, but such regions remain important because people believe they exist. A good example of a vernacular region is “Dixie”, the name frequently applied to the American South. However, exactly which states, towns and counties are in “Dixie” is impossible to measure because there is no single variable capable of defining “southern”. Is Kentucky part of Dixie? What about Missouri? New Orleans? Miami? That depends on what variable one chooses to use as the defining characteristic of “southern”. Still, “Dixie” exists in the minds of millions of Americans, so it’s important to recognize it even if we can’t say for sure where it is. “So Cal”, “The Midwest”, “Cascadia” and even “New England” are other vernacular regions in the United States.

Figure US map this one possible version of the classic American vernacular region, Dixie

Diffusion

Want to know more? Check out the following links!

Tobler, Waldo R. "A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region." Economic Geography (1970): 234-240.

The core-periphery pattern that characterizes some regions is the result of the friction of distance, which is perhaps the most fundamental force influencing the spatial behavior of people, their ideas and their institutions. In the simplest terms, there exists what might be best thought of as a force, almost like gravity, that impedes the spread or diffusion of ideas, behaviors, people, etc. The friction of distance creates patterns on the landscape which are characterized by distance decay, a tendency of objects, ideas and behaviors to decrease in intensity or regularity as they move further from their original source – which is often at a region’s core. This process is so pervasive and predictable that geographer Waldo Tobler called the effect of distance decay, "The First Law of Geography”. Tobler explained the operation of this “law” thus: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. Put more simply, things that are near each other are often more similar than things that are far from each other. According to Tobler, the idea was so self-evident to him that he didn’t realize that he had captured the essence of a fundamental principle when he wrote it down in 1970.

Though very simplistic, it is a useful notion to keep handy as you learn to think like a geographer. Tobler’s first law appears in many guises throughout this text (e.g., “the neighborhood effect”), and it appears in many guises in your daily routine. If you seek a spot in the parking lot at your college nearest your first class of the day, you’ve experienced the friction of distance. If you notice fewer cars at the back of the parking lot, you’re seeing distance decay. The cars parked in the closest spots in the lot are probably all driven by students who arrived early for an 8 AM class, confirming Tobler’s First Law of Geography.

Want to know more? Check out the following links!

New York Times. How Connected is Your Community to Everywhere Else? A map of Facebook Connections

The First Law of Geography characterizes the process of diffusion. Think of an idea, invention or behavior of any sort. Then consider its origins. Somebody or some people must have invented or thought it up or acted in an innovative way. The location where the invention or innovation occurred first is known as the hearth-which is a little-used synonym for “home” – especially the fireplace.