Resources for novice cartographer

July 31, 2009 5:35 AM

What are some good resources for making my own maps?

I do fieldwork in some remote (and mountainous) parts of the world, and although government issue maps are available, their usefulness and reliability are often questionable.

It occurred to me that it'd be an interesting exercise to make my own maps of the regions where I work and on those maps mark only those things which are relevant to my specific domain of research.

Does anyone have any suggestions about cartography resources and tools? Tips are much appreciated! Thanks a lot!

posted by mateuslee to science & nature (10 comments total)

ArcGIS is pretty much the standard, but if you don't already have access to it, it is very expensive, complicated and non-intuitive. That said, it is very powerful and there are online courses offered that will teach you enough to be able to start making your own maps. As well, you could even scan the government maps and use them to create your own useful maps so that you wouldn't have to start from scratch.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 5:59 AM on July 31

Maybe My Maps in Google Maps. You can add place markers, routes, areas and more. And the customized maps are easy to share.
posted by I'm Doing the Dishes at 6:10 AM on July 31

Any cad program will work. There are free and simple to use programs out there. Inkscape is a good map-making tool although it may not be for the highest accuracy unless you use it in tandem with a cad program. Google Sketchup can also be used to make scaled maps with the added features of making them 3d or isometric.
posted by JJ86 at 6:10 AM on July 31

For all intents and purposes, yeah go with Inkscape. It will go very good with GPS.
posted by JJ86 at 6:15 AM on July 31

Getting involved with OpenStreetMap would be right up your alley! -

"Open StreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways."

Lot's of links to tools and resources on their wiki pages.
posted by dirm at 6:42 AM on July 31 [2 favorites]

Is it important to end up with paper maps? Do you want these on a GPS or other mobile device? Or will you be able to view them on a laptop/something with a bigger screen? Is it important to be able to share these maps with others (embed them on a website or send a link)?

How are you at programming? (Not that you need to know any, but it opens up a wider world of possibilities.)

Are you willing to spend money on a program?

What kind of markings do you need to make? Just points (X marks the spot) or also polygons (cattle range, old-growth forest, nesting grounds for bird species)? How about lines (roads, rivers)?

Do you already own a GPS or are you planning to get one?
posted by desjardins at 6:46 AM on July 31

Grass is a collection of open source gis tools. Gdal is a library and set of command line utilities. You can find many more resources at osgeo.org, news at slashgeo.org.

There's a community of people building maps around the openstreetmap project. It's a good term to google for. Also, qgis is another gis utility.
posted by rdr at 6:57 AM on July 31

There's a nifty free lighweight GIS program called Geoda that I learned about a few months ago. It's relatively easy to make maps and do some statistical analysis, but less control over the output when compared with ArcGIS. Runs on Mac/Windows/Linux
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 9:12 AM on July 31

In my area there is a university geography library that has a bunch of computers with ArcGIS, a few hundred commercial map data sets, and a large-format printer. The whole setup is open to the public (small fees for using the printer). It would be worth checking if something like that is in your neighborhood.

GRASS is extremely difficult to use. I used a package called OpenJUMP to make a map about a year ago, it worked okay but was nowhere near as full-featured as ArcGIS. I hadn't heard of Geoda but it looks very good.
posted by miyabo at 10:02 AM on July 31

Oh, also: if you're near a major university, see if you can enlist the help of a geography or GIS student. Someone who already owns all the tools, and is familiar with them, can probably make a custom map of any part of the world in just a few minutes. The ones I know would do a project like this for a beer or two.
posted by miyabo at 10:13 AM on July 31 [1 favorite]