Mapping

Making Maps for Sale

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I occasionally requests I get from people is to obtain printed versions of the maps that I feature on my blog. I’ve never seriously thought about selling hard-copy maps, but it’s one I’m starting to investigate more thoroughly based on the handful of inquiries I get and the relatively-high prices many other people charge.🤑 At the same time the stylistic quality of my maps has improved, as QGIS has included more advanced features in their free GIS program and my skill and knowledge have improved with the software. More free, useful public data is now available for download from the Internet too. I’m very excited about when I upgrade to QGIS 3.0 this spring time.

Making the maps is a relatively easy proposition for me, but getting them printed at an affordable rate is more of a challenge. I should learn more about glossy water resistant card stock and what the costs are for small runs of maps at local printshops. I know they make various types of water resistant card stock, which I think most people would prefer over something that was actually laminated in plastic.🗺 If I found a product that was quality, and found the price, the next thing would be figure out what a reasonable price for my labor is. I’m guessing most of my maps that I would sell would be custom laid out, although I guess I could also sell maps that I have displayed on my blog.

I have in the past made a little money on making maps for various causes, although I admit most of map making has been volunteer in nature. 🍂But that’s fine because I’m learning new skills and getting my name out there. But if there is a product in demand that I could make affordable — possibly well below price of big professional types — it might be worth my effort. It’s something I’m chewing over.

30 Years of Nitrogen Fertilization in Spruce-Fir Forest – CompassLive

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30 Years of Nitrogen Fertilization in Spruce-Fir Forest – CompassLive

"Rocks and sediments bind up almost 98 percent of all nitrogen. The remaining 2 percent is in motion, part of a global chemical cycle that includes humans, bacteria, plants, and the atmosphere.
“Plants need nitrogen to grow,” says U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Steve McNulty. “However, excess nitrogen can harm plants.”

"Nitrogen and sulfur can combine with oxygen to form nitrogen or sulfur oxides. These compounds become part of the atmosphere, where they react with water vapor and other elements. Eventually, the nitrogen and sulfur – now in the form of nitric and sulfuric acid – fall to the ground with the rain drops."

Trading One Bad Map for Another?

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Trading One Bad Map for Another?

"Earlier this month, the social studies classrooms of Boston Public Schools underwent a slight but significant change in decor. Down came the Mercator Projection—a common choice of world maps for schools—which distorts the size of each land mass but keeps continental shapes intact. Up went a different map, the Peters, which stretches out the world in order to give each continent a proportionally accurate amount of room. On the Peters, Canada—so huge on the Mercator—shrinks to its proper size, while Africa, which the Mercator shows shrunk and jammed beneath a too-large Europe, stretches out."

Natural Earth

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Natural Earth

"Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software."

How does GPS work?

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How does GPS work?

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of about 30 satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 20,000 km. The system was originally developed by the US government for military navigation but now anyone with a GPS device, be it a SatNav, mobile phone or handheld GPS unit, can receive the radio signals that the satellites broadcast.

Wherever you are on the planet, at least four GPS satellites are ‘visible’ at any time. Each one transmits information about its position and the current time at regular intervals. These signals, travelling at the speed of light, are intercepted by your GPS receiver, which calculates how far away each satellite is based on how long it took for the messages to arrive.