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How Can Objects on Earth be Located?. Types of Maps. Cartography: study and practice of making geographical maps. Mercator Projections :Cyclindrical projections and greatly distorts near poles. Conic. Meridians are straight equidistant lines, converging at a point
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Types of Maps • Cartography: study and practice of making geographical maps. • Mercator Projections:Cyclindrical projections and greatly distorts near poles
Conic • Meridians are straight equidistant lines, converging at a point • Made by projecting points and lines from a globe onto a cone.
Gnomonic • Any straight line drawn on the map is on a great circle, but directions are true only from center point of projection. • Scale increases very rapidly away from center point. Distortion of shapes and areas increases away from center point. • Used along with the Mercator by some navigators to find the shortest path between two points. Used in seismic work because seismic waves tend to travel along great circles.
Topographic: • Topographic maps render the three-dimensional ups and downs of the terrain on a two-dimensional surface. • Topographic maps usually portray both natural and manmade features
Topex/Poseiden Launched in 1992, TOPEX/Poseidon was a joint satellite mission between NASA, the U.S. space agency, and CNES, the French space agency, to map ocean surface topography using microwaves
Landsat • The Landsat program is the longest running enterprise for acquisition of imagery of Earth from space using visible/infrared light. • The first Landsat satellite was launched in 1972; • The most recent, Landsat 7, was launched on April 15, 1999 and the next one is scheduled to be launched in 2012
Global Positioning System • The GPS is made up of three parts: satellites orbiting the Earth; control and monitoring stations on Earth; and the GPS receivers owned by users. • GPS satellites broadcast signals from space that are picked up and identified by GPS receivers (radar). • Each GPS receiver then provides three-dimensional location (latitude, longitude, and altitude) plus the time.
How do we read a map? • Longitude: Also called meridians are the lines that run up and down (long) • Prime Meridian: 0 degrees longitude • Latitude: Lines that run across • Equator: 0 degrees latitude
What are Topographic Maps? • Topographic maps show a 3 dimensional world in 2 dimensions by using contour lines. • Contour lines are curves that connect contiguous points of the same altitude
How do we determine Contour Intervals? • The contour interval measurement is the vertical distance between adjacent contour lines • What is the contour interval on this map? • Determine the altitude of points a, b, c.
What are Hachures? • If a loop instead represents a depression, some maps note this by short lines radiating from the inside of the loop, called "hachures".
What do the Colors Represent? • ColorsThe colors on a topographic map are symbolic of different map features. • Blue = water • Green = forest • Brown = contour lines • Black = cultural features (buildings, place names, boundary lines, roads, etc.) • Red = principal roads • Pink = urban areas • Purple = revisions to an older map, compiled from aerial photos. If an area has become urbanized, this may be shown as purple shading on the new, revised map.
Time Zones: • 24 Time zones, every 15 degrees longitude • West (-): East (+) • International Dateline: Date changes a whole day (Japan ahead one day)