Free Maps

outrageGIS.com turns 25

June 18, 2024 by cartography Leave a Comment

outrageGIS.com started in 1999 and has been continuously online since then. The first version of the website had this animated GIF. Check out the evolution of the site on the Wayback Machine.

While we are known for trail maps, we started mapping for video animation and broadcast graphics. You might remember your nightly local news in Kentucky and seeing maps—we might have contributed to that graphic.

In the early 2000s, we slung on a Trimble Pro XRS backpack GPS unit, outfitted a one-color offset press studio, and began printing spot and process color maps. Our first title was the Red River Gorge trail, a two-color map that we sold in local gas stations. We then printed titles for the Big South Fork, Great Smokies, Cumberland Gap, and the Daniel Boone National Forest. We did numerous contract maps for state parks and non-profits, and even an audio driving tour, The First Frontier Audio Driving Tour.

Gazetteer for the Trail Atlas of the Great Smokies, a 32-page 6″ x 4.5″ duotone booklet

In 2008, Boyd started teaching at the UKy Department of Geography and accepted a faculty position in 2018. His work focuses on terrain modeling and topographic mapping using lidar data. Periodically, outrageGIS mapping is brought into the classroom to demonstrate web and digital media technologies.

Filed Under: Free Maps, Maps

Rowan County Explorer

June 16, 2024 by cartography Leave a Comment

Over the years teaching GIS & mapping, Boyd has tried to connect his students with real-world mapping opportunities. One such opportunity emerged when Rowan County, Kentucky, wanted an interactive map showing trails and tourism destinations in the area. Workshopping with students in GEO 305 (Elements of Cartography) and later MAP 672 (Programming for Web Mapping) in UKy’s Department of Geography, he drafted a web map.

Rowan County, Kentucky, trail and tourism explorer — Trail and tourism explorer for Rowan County, Kentucky: https://outrageGIS.com/rowan

The criteria for this map were that it needed to be completely open source (without relying on any for-fee platforms) and self-contained—the project lives in a folder that could be dropped into any web server and would just work. This project uses LeafletJS and public base maps from Kentucky DGI.

The page departs from the traditional web map; marginalia, typically on a print map, was added to this map. A viewer can zoom into the legend! While the creative choices made on this project offered a fulfilling experience, students have their own trajectories and soon pivot interests after a course is finished.

The project is a draft, but it is active. Tell us what you think: https://outrageGIS.com/rowan

Filed Under: All Hikes, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, class maps, Free Maps, Maps, Sheltowee Trace

New base maps for Sheltowee Trace

June 9, 2024 by cartography Leave a Comment

Find high-resolution aerial imagery and shaded relief maps for Kentucky (and some for Tennessee) on SheltoweeTrace.com.

We’re adding new base maps for our Sheltowee Trace map. The current maps are:

Default map shows a generalized shaded relief, hydrologic features, and public land.
Aerial photography shows 2-ft pixel resolution, leaf-off 2019 imagery.
Shaded relief (KY) uses KyFromAbove point clouds from 2010s to create a shaded relief detailed enough to show trail and road beds.
Topographic (KY) shows the Topographic map series created by the Kentucky Division of Geographic Information.
Topographic (Maptiler) displays a modifed Maptiler Outdoors base map. It is a global base map pulled a variety of open-source data. Trail and other information portrayed on this base map is not maintained by outrageGIS mapping. Also, elevation contours can show errors around 100 feet.

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Free Maps, Maps, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace

Cumulative elevation gain calculator

June 9, 2024 by cartography Leave a Comment

How much elevation gain did you have on your last Sheltowee Trace hike? We built a calculator and elevation profile on SheltoweeTrace.com.

Cumulative elevation gain calculator on sheltoweetrace.com

The data used in the calculator is pulled from lidar point cloud elevations created in the mid-2010s. Digital elevation models (DEM) derived from these point clouds have a 5-ft spatial resolution and are detailed enough to show wider trails in shaded relief rendering of the DEM. The point elevations for the Sheltowee Trace are sampled every 1/10th of a mile and allow for calculating gains between mile markers with a single decimal place. The result shows both southbound and northbound gains.

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Free Maps, Maps, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace

Terrain Explorer

May 30, 2024 by cartography Leave a Comment

In this web map, we explore how to use different elevation models in 3D maps. The KyFromAbove project collects and maintains high-resolution elevation data and aerial imagery for Kentucky. The bare-earth Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was created from a lidar point cloud. This is the typical elevation model that we use. The same point cloud was then filtered to create a Digital Surface Model (DSM) showing above-ground elevations, like buildings and trees. Both of these elevation models were converted to terrain tiles to use in web mapping applications. MapLibre GL JS 3D features terrain rendering with RGB-encoded elevation raster tiles.

The sliders allow the viewer to change the vertical exaggeration of the DEM and DSM. If geolocation is enabled, a track will record the viewer’s location. That track can be downloaded as a GeoJSON (works in Chrome).

Visit the page: outragegis.com/terrain-explorer/

This was a project in the UKy Geography MAP 675, a course in the department’s Digital Mapping MS graduate program. The aerial imagery and elevation data are from 2019.

Filed Under: Free Maps, Maps Tagged With: lidar, point clouds

RRG 3D terrain map

May 10, 2023 by cartography Leave a Comment

Interactive web maps have come a long way over the years. First we had slippy maps using raster tilesets – they’ve been around for about twenty years and are incredibly durable. However, once the tileset is rendered, it’s not easy to change the look of the raster image. You will need to render a new tileset and replace the old. Because a tileset can contain millions of images, it’s not a quick replacement.

Gaming technology evolved in the browser and brought us WebGL and vector tilesets. These tileset features have attributes and are rendered programatically in the browser. It’s rather easy to change the appearance of a feature and Mapbox built a browser application, Studio, to create endless styles of maps using vector features. What’s not easy is serving a vector tileset to a client until recently. Libraries like PMTiles bundle a vector tileset into a single file that expose the necessary to the client browser.

More recently, elevation (terrain) tilesets have made 3D maps more exciting to create and explore. Once an elevation is loaded, all other layers, tilesets, etc. are draped over elevation surface. Depending on the resolution of the elevation data, this surface can dramatically change the appearance of the map.

Using an open source mapping library like MapLibre GL JS, a browser can simultaneous consume raster, vector, and terrain tilesets to make a 3D map for any place you have data. Kentucky has excellent data availabilty including lidar data to make high-resolution elevation surfaces. This map uses that lidar data to create the terrain tileset and a shaded relief raster tileset. The vector tilesets for trails, roads, etc. are derived exclusively from OpenStreetMap. The water layers are from the USGS National Hydrological Dataset.

Below is a screen capture of the web page and a link. You might notice that it doesn’t have all of the trails that our printed maps show. We may add those trails in the future, because it would helpful for planning your trip. And, we’re not planning to move to an exclusive mobile app. With all of the advances in mobile technology, we think paper maps are still essential for learning basic navigation and map reading.

The map can be loaded here: outrageGIS.com/gorge/map

Happy adventures!

Filed Under: Free Maps, Hikes: Red River Gorge, homepage, Maps, News, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace

Bluegrass Trails

August 29, 2022 by cartography Leave a Comment

Looking for a place to hike in the central Bluegrass? Check out this old-school style interactive map: https://www.outragegis.com/maps/bluegrass/

Filed Under: All Hikes, Free Maps, Maps

Experimenting with Geolocation API

July 22, 2022 by cartography Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under: All Hikes, Free Maps, homepage, Maps, News, Weather

Weather archive updates

June 6, 2022 by cartography Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Free Maps, Great Smoky Mountains, homepage, Maps, News, Weather

New Red River Gorge map

May 28, 2022 by cartography Leave a Comment

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

New map in our printed series for the Red River Gorge

Filed Under: Free Maps, homepage, Maps, News, Red River Gorge

Sheltowee Trace elevation profile

July 6, 2020 by cartography Leave a Comment

Working on the 2020 update of the Sheltowee Trace maps using high-resolution DEMs derived from lidar point clouds. An elevation profile was created by sampling elevation every 264 feet along the 343-mile trail. This profile shows the proposed extension from Burnt Mill bridge to Rugby.

Enlarge

The resolution is high enough to see the indentation of wider trail beds, which helps verify GPS data.

Trail bed observed new Gray’s Arch recreation area

The updated trail maps should be at the printer by mid-July.

Filed Under: Free Maps, Maps, News, Sheltowee Trace Tagged With: dem, elevation profile, lidar, point clouds

Toward a scenic trail index

August 12, 2019 by cartography Leave a Comment

Sheltowee Trace, Daniel Boone National Forest, and Big South Fork scenic trail index — Visit the web page

Over the years we’ve pursued some measure that reveals the character of 900+ miles of trail here. Often we talk about a trail’s length or steepness with other dimensions gleaned from the base map. In this experiment, we are creating zones at discreet locations along trails and estimating the character of that location.

Over 14,000 polygons are shown on this 3D Mapbox map. The color indicates the type of scenery and height shows how much relief is the area. Future additions to this map include adding a searching tool and summary statistics for each trail.

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Free Maps, homepage, Maps, Maps Archive, News, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace

West Sixth Farm trail map

June 16, 2019 by cartography Leave a Comment

Took an afternoon to GPS map the trail network at the West Sixth farm outside of Frankfort, Kentucky. You can download the map here https://www.westsixth.com/farmtrailmap.

West Sixth Farm trail map — Preview of the map

The farm maintains a mountain bike trail with technical features and one-way trails. Enjoy a ride and then a brew.

lidar point cloud render — View an interactive 3D map of the area

As an experiment, we added a 3D map from a lidar point cloud viewable here: https://outragegis.com/pointclouds/w6.

Filed Under: Free Maps, homepage, Maps, Maps Archive, News

New Maps Plus projects

May 1, 2019 by cartography Leave a Comment

Visit the full-screen map.

I began teaching at New Maps Plus in October 2015. Students have made many awesome maps since then. This ‘map of maps’ shows projects going back to early 2017. Many of the early projects utilized CartoDB (now CARTO), which has evolved considerably over the years. While technology and visualization techniques change, a map is also an artistic pursuit and perhaps can withstand the ebb and flow of tech design styles.

Filed Under: Free Maps, homepage, Maps, News

New images and data from GOES-16

December 29, 2018 by cartography Leave a Comment

Visit the page to view and download imagery

Over Christmas break, it was time to automate collecting and displaying the incredibly detailed imagery from the GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager. A problem that plagued previous efforts was not accessing the raw data, a netCDF formatted file for the contiguous U.S. which can be downloaded freely from a variety of cloud data hosts. With the raw data, one can project, modify and use it in web mapping libraries like Leaflet.

This page offers a slippy map of grayscale and color imagery and is updated every 15 minutes. You can download GeoTIFFs of rendered layers that can be used in GIS applications.

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Cumberland Gap, NHP, Free Maps, Great Smoky Mountains, homepage, Maps, News, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace, Weather