Student Weekly Posts

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Emma Reed Blog Post 3

The article, How the US has Hidden its Empire, by Daniel Immerwahr examines maps of the United States at different points through history and how US opinions on foreign lands, identity, and power shaped them. Immerwahr begins to lay out his argument as he unfolds the history of the Pearl Harbor bombing and the intentional decisions that were behind sharing the news with the public. The United States purposefully left out the bombings that occurred in their territories of Guam, Midway, the Philippines, and Wake Island even though all of them, including Hawaii, were territories at this time. This exclusion is mirrored in how the United States and its territories are displayed through maps. He argues that this clearly shows that the US thought of Hawaii as “more American” than these other territories.

Maps are often used to shape the perception of imperialism in the public. Political Scientist Benedict Anderson describes this as the “logo map” (pictured above) meaning that if the United States had a logo it would only be the lower 48 states. However, this is not politically correct, even in the year of the Japanese bombings as it should include all territories such as Hawaii, Alaska, the Philippines, etc. The image below shows a comparison between the current US territories and its former territories.

This analysis allows us to understand the true interconnectedness of Japan’s attacks not just on Hawaii, but across American Pacific territories. By looking at what versions of maps were being produced during specific time periods, one can get an understanding of the geopolitical context the world was in at that point. This can still be seen today and an example of this is a standard world map. By placing Europe and “The West” in the center of the map, it is inadvertently promoting a euro-centric idea of the world. This explains how the argument Immerwahr is making still stands today.

Immerwahr, Daniel. “How the US Has Hidden Its Empire.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Feb. 2019, www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/15/the-us-hidden-empire-overseas-territories-united-states-guam-puerto-rico-american-samoa.

Rankin, Bill. “Radicalcartography.” Radicalcartography, radicalcartography.net/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2024.  

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GIS Activity Week 3- Isabel Blackford

This georeferenced image could be used to uncover new information about the history of the region I just mapped by using the cities that correlate to modern day cities as landmarks to discover new things nearby. Although a state such as New Jersey that is highly populated with not much land left undiscovered, that does not mean more information cannot be found. An example like this was helpful in trying to find a gravesite of an ancestor of mine while doing genealogical research by using old maps to find the nearly deserted and forgotten graveyard. Another way a georeferenced image such as this could be found helpful is rediscovering shipwrecks that have been lost to time using old landmarks from the 1892 map to compare to those in Google Maps.

Some potential weaknesses to using this approach however lies in the fact that in the modern day we have much more exact technology than what was had in 1892. That means the proportions of the 1892 have points where they are not nearly as exact as the modern day Google Maps map. This leads to cities and landmarks not always being in the same spot over the years even if their geological area has not changed at all in the past one hundred years. The consequences to these discrepancies can lead to things/places being miles from what they are mapped to be which can be frustrating when attempting to find something that has been lost to time. Places that have geological landmarks tend to be easier to map out because those landmarks do not move and remain stagnant, acting as points of reference when creating maps of that area.

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Gabe Murphy: GIS Activity – Georeferencing

Overlapping multiple layers of maps can be very beneficial: in this case, and many other examples, I believe it is best used to experience/note change over time. The layered map (sitting on top of the google map base) has Haleakala National Park of Hawaii labeled in red. Over 60 years later, it would be very easy to indicate either the expansion of such reserve or the decrease in size. I would hope the reserve has increased in size from the 1962 map as maintenance and preservation of biodiversity grows in importance. Second, as ice caps begin to melt and ocean levels rise, this map would provide great insight into this change as depths and contour lines of shoreline/reef structures are highlighted. This could help to examine change over time as climate conditions continue to shift. The red lines highlight, what I presume to be, the main highway that encompasses the island of Maui. There would be a great change in this system as infrastructure seems to be on an exponential expansion destroying everything in its path. 

As different maps undoubtedly have different scales, this scaling may throw off the true shape of the location the map focuses on. When this occurs, it may make it hard to accurately overlay two maps and ensure that one point on one lines up with one on the other. Further, as technology advances the accuracy of mapping does as well. When comparing a map from 60+ years ago, as I did, to a never-ending data mine (google maps), there will definitely be some differences in borders, town locations, streets, etc. In this case, my map was created by the US Army so I believe their technology at the time would have been the most advanced, possibly not even available to the public. However, maps today are certainly more accurate than the best of the 1960s. This may make it hard to georeference one map onto another–simply based on inaccuracies and changes. As seen in my example, there is a stretch of highway running over the ocean in the bottom-middle region of the island; when in reality this does not happen. There was simply no way to accurately depict the entire shoreline, and this stretch took the biggest hit. Using 7 control points was not enough to layer these maps together, I had to use nearly 20–a definite weakness of this approach. I am wondering if there is a way to trace a border and layer them together by that–I feel like that would be a much more accurate, but tedious, method. Overall, I am satisfied with how the georeference came out: but it is certainly not a 1:1 scale.

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Emma Reed Week 3 Practicum

1. How might you use this georeferenced image to uncover new information about the history of the region you just mapped.

When comparing an older map to today’s Google Maps, changes in the region over time become apparent. Even in an older city like Rome, there have been changes since the creation of the map to today. In addition, this approach of georegerenced images can be helpful to have a more indepth understanding of the streets within the region. For example, the neighborhood of Trastevere, which lies on the other side of the Tiber, is hardly depicted in the original map. However, when layed with Google Maps, the viewer gains a more indepth understanding of the neighborhood as its vast network of streets. Similar to this, neighborhoods on the outskirts of Rome come into view when layered with Google Maps.

2. What are some weaknesses to this approach? Are there inaccuracies? Do some places map better than others? Why?

One weakness to this approach is that one of the two maps may have inaccuracies. When creating the older map, the author might not have had all the resources we have today to make accurate decisions about where to place its features. This leads into the idea of how some places are mapped better than others when using georeferenced images. Places along rivers tend to change over time as the river moves its course. This causes disreprecies between the two maps. In addition, cities with rapid urbanization in the 20th and 21st century would also be harder to map as it would be harder to pinpoint your control points. Examples of this can be seen all across North America as cities have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. However, this means that it might be easier to map from this approach with cities that haven’t experienced urbanization to the extent of other cities, such as Rome. Many of Rome’s key features have been around for centuries allowing the mapping of control points to be much easier than other cities with rapidly developing skylines.

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Georeferencing in QGIS Evan Murphy

How might you use this georeferenced image to uncover new information about
the history of the region you just mapped.

There is a lot of changes that are noticeable just through this reference of Kansas City. The most interesting in this map which was a map of parks in Kansas City. Many of the park boundaries have expanded and changed slightly, but not to a massive degree. Notably the boundaries of the Parade and the North Terrace have changed slightly. There are also many new interesting things in the Parade including the founding of the Negro League Baseball Museum. Other changes are visible on the map as well, many of the rivers in the surrounding area have changed course and it is obvious on the map, especially at the top right of the 1901 map. Overall, change over time is clearly mapped out through this exercise.

What are some weaknesses to this approach? Are there inaccuracies? Do some
places map better than others? Why?

One of the weaknesses of this approach is definitely the changes in park boundaries. The reference being a map of parks in the area and cemetery’s caused me to use these points as references often. There should be some obvious discrepancies between the two maps due to the changes in borders although much of the map looks good overall. The closer the map is to the Kansas border the more accurate it is. This is likely due to there being more parks closer to the rivers and no other notable points in Kansas City at this point. Overall the map is not the best reference to use due to it’s age and the change of rivers.

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Blog Post 2/ William Smith-Marie Amelse

William Smith’s map is regarded as the first geological map created, and The Map That Changed The World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester shows why that is important. Winchester sets the context, William Smith was born into seemingly unchanging times, where it appeared that people would be farming communal parish, living under an unquestioned church, and believing that the world began only a few thousand of years ago. However, as it ended up Smith grew up into the Enlightenment, where questions of how and why things are the way that they are became less frowned upon.

William Smith first became interested in the different type of soil when he worked with canal builders. It was during this work that Smith became well acquainted the differing, mostly predictable layers of rock. A key in identifying similar rock layers, or strata, that smith used was the presence of different types of fossils.

After collecting data from several different freelancing jobs across Great Britain, William Smith published Geological Map of Part of Great Britain in 1815. It displays different types of strata using a large array of colors to represent them.  Smith had made this map to aid in the findings of coal, which was the reason he was engineering canals, to transport the coal. True to its purpose, there are few features outside of what was needed to represent the strata. Even then the features represented are waterways, needed to transport the coal, and town names, used as points of reference.

Lastly, an important detail of the map is its sheer size of eight feet by six feet. An unusually large size for a map, most likely intended to show both vivid detail and the vastness of change that Great Britain possessed within its geology.

Smith, William. Geology of England and Wales with Part of Scotland. 1815. “William Smith’s Maps – Interactive.” http://www.strata-smith.com/map/#info.

Winchester, Simon. The Map That Changed the World. Chivers Press, 2002.

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