What’s in a map?

Being a geographer, as many know, deals largely with reading and making maps. Maps are universal and as images can be understood by nearly everyone. Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the first editor of NGM, felt that, “A map is the greatest of all epic poems. It’s lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.”

On Friday I had the privilege to tour the NGS Maps Department. The tour was led by Juan Valdes, followed by a lecture. Recently, Juan’s team finished a wall map of Cuba, the first of its kind since 1906.

Juan’s Cuba map is significant on many levels. In addition to being the first updated and wholly accurate physical depiction of the island, it is uniquely special for Juan. For Juan was born in Cuba,  and fifty years ago, when he was seven years old, he was forced to leave his home. Though he has not returned to Cuba since leaving, the creation of this map allowed Juan to revisit the contours and peaks of the land he used to know.

Many people believe we have run out of places to explore and areas to map. Juan’s work shows that there is still adventure to be had in cartography.

“Just about every place has been mapped,” he admits, “it’s the level of detail that is the issue.” As he showed us the maps he has worked on, we saw just how intensive those details can be.

The Cuba map was especially tricky to make due to issues of data availability and language. A “short” project lasts five months. This maps took about a year. The steps in the production process are many, and just when the map seems finished, it’s, well, not. What would seem like a perfectly fine map to you or I has to be torn apart, checked and triple checked. After the GIS layers are arranged together and design elements are added, missing channels and reservoirs are found. Boundaries are “off,” delineation and place names are verified with country administration, spelling is checked multiple times, roads and railways are verified with public transportation routes, letter accents are verified, bathometrics (ocean depth along the shore)  from multiple sources are analyzed  etc. And then the process is repeated.

NGS updates their world maps every three months. Juan’s team checks wire services daily and even make calls to embassies around the world to monitor political  changes in place names and boundary ownership. When asked where all of this information comes from he’s immodest yet vague, saying simply, “We’re well connected…  to be a cartographer, you have to know a little bit about everything.”

As children in elementary school, we are taught that all maps fall into a handful of categories: political (showing place names and human-made boundaries), physical (showing surface characteristics like mountains, rivers, etc.) or topographic (land elevation). What we are finding now, however, is that every map is in fact, by nature, political in some way. Any toponym (geographical name), boundary line, even color choice is man-made, and reflects ownership. The politics concerning land ownership are always changing. Just this summer we saw a new country take form, South Sudan. Soon, Libya’s boundaries could shift as well.

Juan tells us a story of a small island in the South Pacific, vehemently claimed by two countries. In the end, Mother Nature claimed her tiny island, swallowing it up in a Tsunami. The “problem” of how to label it was solved.  But “maps, like history,” Juan claims, “have a pattern of repeating themselves.” Political boundaries approach and recede like tides, conquering and  then  abandoning what they claim to be theirs. And so, maps change.