If you visit this site often, you likely have a favorite map app on your phone. I certainly do and I have installed dozens of apps over the years. Most focus on placing your location as a dot on the map.

The dot

Any map app that shows your location as a dot on the map fosters a dependence on your exact location. We end up saying, "I am here" instead of asking "Where am I?"

To build strong spatial awareness, we should look at the dot after studying the plain map and doing an exercise in terrain association. Can we orient the map (best done with a paper map, folks) so that map north aligns with observed north? Can we then identify features on the map and estimate their distance from us?

These are questions in topograhic map reading. If you carefully observe your environment and compare its representation on the map, you will not need the dot.

When there was no dot

Let’s say the early 1990s. Before that time, we used paper maps. Soon after, handheld GPS units became popular and only showed coordinates for your position and maybe some other location statistics like speed, elevation, distance & bearing to next waypoint. They were often used with a paper map that had a grid (with linear units on a flat space) or a graticule (angular units on a curved space) that helped a user measure their location.

Using coordinates, we looked at the paper map’s margin for marks that pointed you to a general location. To find the exact location, we looked up and asked, "Where am I?" and compared the map with what we saw. We built a mental map of our surroundings. There was no dot.

An app without a dot?

So, we thought we would kick it back to the 90s and make a browser app that mimics these early devices. Because our maps have detailed graticules and mile markers for the Sheltowee Trace, this app should compliment your journey into topography and map reading. This app is designed for mobile devices and below is a screen capture of a use on an iPhone.

GPS app can be loaded here: https://outrageGIS.com/gps

This app is free, open source, doesn’t need to be installed, and won’t collect any information from you.

Happy adventures!

We have a lot of great raster base map services available in Kentucky and I wanted to access them for my current location when I use my mobile device in the field. While there are many ways to make a mobile map, I wanted use Leaflet JS and build a custom geolocation service using the Geolocation API. Some desired features for the web page:

• The interface should be just the map, with a single button to access the controls
• Location services should record a track of previous locations with distance covered
• Location coordinates should be averaged over a sample period to help with accuracy
• Other information for the current location should be offered on the page, e.g., hourly weather forecasts.

Map cound found here: https://outrageGIS.com/location

The below screen capture shows the control panel for selecting base map and enabling the the location services. It also gratuitously adds content from the last three posts to this forum. (Practicing with Tailwind CSS for potential site redesign.)

Please feel to add your comments and tell how it works on your mobile device. It has tested on Chrome and Safari mobile browsers.

Some caveats.

• The tracking feature is tuned to walking. If you drive or bike, the track will more generalized the faster you travel.
• Of course, you’ll need to enable location for the page :). I promise that nothing is used or saved from your session. This is a completely client-side app.
• If you refresh your browser, the page is reset and your track is lost. Working on a local database option to save the track.
• This page requires an online connection. Working on an offline version, too.

Above is an screen capture of the Kentucky Topo map for the state. Other base maps include, lidar-derived surface models and current GOES-16 imagery.

Screen capture of track mapping on a mobile device

We collect imagery from national park webcams in the Great Smokies and Mammoth Cave parks and then make animated gifs of those webcam images. In 2011, I penciled this quick note:

110629 Nice time-lapse photography for all cameras and satellite. Make movie?

Beginning in 2012, we started archiving these animations.

New webcam added to animation archive

Turns out, we had Mammoth Cave working for the entire 2021 year, but didn’t have them accessible via a web page. With a little grep and sed action, the gifs were added to the default page for the Great Smokies archive. Visit the interface here.

We plan on having at least the last year covered in the archive. At 60 GB a year now with HD cameras, it can get expensive hosting multiple years. I do have the years back to 2012 stored offline.

Over the past spring, we’ve been revamping our popular map for the Red River Gorge. The map should be available in early June. One of the additions is a new Bird’s Eye View map that user lidar elevation data and Blender 3d modeling software. You can view a zoomable image with this link

Time to explore the data on a map. The experiment is show block group data for select demographic data, which was used for redistricting. This interactive presentation is a test of concept to show population density. Eventually, an UI element will be added to symbolize block groups by precent population in self-identified racial group – as defined in Census categories.

After a few weeks fiddling with the Blender 3D application to make smooth shaded reliefs, I decided to create raster tilesets that could be used with web mapping applications for a unique look. While the shading is not as accurate as multidirectional shading techniques used in GDAL and ArcGIS Pro, it makes a more artistic rendering.

To view a web page with samples, check out boydx.github.io/hugo-maps and also learn about the New Maps Plus program at the University of Kentucky).

Examples