NACIS 2024

Modeling Bicycle Ridership: Challenges, Opportunities, and Scalable Solutions for Northwest Arkansas
Nelofar Qulizada
This paper addresses the growing significance of bicycling in urban settings and the challenges in accurately estimating bicyclist counts. The objective is to enhance current methods and improve the placement of counters within Northwest Arkansas. Existing studies often need to provide precise estimates, prompting the need for a more comprehensive approach. Our methodology involves a thorough comparative analysis of data from various sources, including crowdsourced, contextual, and location-specific data. We tune the values of the model parameters to obtain the best fit for our data from multiple sources and then assess accuracy by comparing our model predictions to independent ground truth measurements that were not used to fit the model.

Measuring Trust in Maps: Introducing the MAPTRUST Scale
Timothy Prestby, Penn State University
Contemporary research on trust in maps is limited by inconsistent and untested measures of trust. This talk outlines the development and evaluation of the MAPTRUST Scale: a numerical rating scale that exclusively measures the degree to which someone trusts a map. Accordingly, we found that trust in maps can be measured by asking people to rate how well a set of 12 adjectives describe a map: accurate, correct, error-free, honest, trustworthy, credible, fair, reliable, reputable, objective, authentic, and balanced. This scale can be a useful tool for researchers and practitioners alike to measure an individual’s trust in maps.

The Azimuthal Arctic
John Cloud, The Arctic Studies Center & National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution
Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) and Richard Edes Harrison (1901-1994) researched and created important maps of the boreal and Arctic realms, for distinctly different purposes, almost half a millennium apart. But both cartographers were illuminating climate change, based on their own historical research, their acute observations of their eras, and their mastery of globes. Their azimuthal perspectives were foundational, and will remain the keys to our own responses to climate change.

What Does it Mean to Understand a Map?
Amy Griffin, RMIT University & Anthony Robinson, Penn State University
Generative AI technologies can do a remarkably good job of (re)producing digital representations of some things that exist in the material world (though not maps yet!). Some images produced by tools like DallE-3 or Midjourney look remarkably "real". To achieve these outcomes, AI technologies employ statistics to characterize the datasets they are fed and identify patterns in these datasets. When scholars and practitioners describe how artificial intelligence technologies work, we say they "learn" things about the world. But does AI really understand anything? This talk will explore the question of what it means to understand a map and to what extent AI technologies can understand maps.

“By Dint of Some Unshowy Beauty”: a Concordance Analysis of Aesthetic Vocabulary in Cartographic Textbooks 1928-2023
Chelsea Nestel, University of Wisconsin - Madison
How has Euro academic cartography arrived at its current aesthetic epistemologies? I examine this question using corpus analysis from linguistics, analyzing the changing in-line usage of the word aesthetics and related words design, taste, beauty, art, and style. My analysis reveals how aesthetic concepts such as judgment, value, objects, attitude, and experience have been expressed over time. These aesthetic concepts are integral not just to how maps are made, but how they are experienced and used, constructing cartographically “good” maps.

Atlas in a Day: Imagining a Black Counter-Atlas of Abolition
Kela Caldwell, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Building on critical cartographies of African American freedom struggles (Alderman et al, 2001), I explore the political potentials of producing a Black counter-atlas of racial violence in an effort to challenge and re-historicize how anti-black violence is defined and categorized. In this paper, I draw on participant surveys, mapping creations, and my reflections from a Design Challenge workshop hosted by the UW–Madison Cartography Lab to explore visualizing and re-historicizing anti-black violence through atlas co-creation. Here, I share lessons from the Design Challenge as an opportunity to imagine what futurities might emerge from producing and placing cartographic visualizations of abolition in relationship with each other.

Mapping the Future of Food in Climate Change With VACS Earth Genome
Caroline Carter & Kelsey Taylor, Stamen Design
In support of the US Department of State’s Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) initiative, Stamen Design teamed up with Earth Genome to create VACS Explorer, an interactive cartographic tool that allows users to compare the modeled viability of different crops in Africa in 2050 depending on which UN climate change scenario unfolds. Climate change will test agriculture practices across the globe in ways humans can’t fully predict. We built the VACS Explorer in attempts to make these agricultural decisions more data-driven. Hear how we use features like small multiples, supplementary sand & soil and nutrition data, a navigable minimap, and more to build out this experience for all users.

In the Hot Seat: Acquiring Kernel Density Heat Map Design Guidance Through Delphi and Survey Methods
Lauren McKinney-Wise, Portland State University
Kernel density heat maps have emerged as a new, popular thematic map type. Yet, unlike other thematic map types, little if any published guidance exists for effective heat map design. This is significant because maps are highly persuasive objects that are often utilized to communicate important information. To address this literature gap, I conducted a Delphi experiment with cartographic experts to gather heat map design guidance and then tested the effectiveness of the expert-informed heat map design guidance among public reference librarians in the US using an online survey. This is a shortened version of my master's thesis presentation.

Cheap and Pricey: NPR Leveraged Free Tools To Build and Host Our Own Slippy Maps. Was It Worth It?
Daniel Wood, NPR
This year, NPR published an extremely detailed tool to help gardeners around the country understand the updated USDA plant hardiness zone map. To do this, we built our own slippy maps, utilizing all free and open-source tools: Maplibre GL JS, Protomaps, OpenMapTiles, Tilezen, OSM data, and more. The final product was so cool. It is extremely cheap (in $) and extremely costly (in time, if you're a n00b like me). Come and weigh the costs and benefits together. You will learn about the recent (re)explosion of open source tools for making detailed, performant, and pretty maps online, how ChatGPT helped me understand documentation I didn't want to read, and what I'd do differently next time.

Creating a 3D Map of the Haleakalā Volcano on Mauii
Jim Eynard, U.S. National Park Service
The summit in Haleakalā National Park, at 10,023 feet (3,055m) , is the tallest peak on the island of Maui in Hawaii. This map uses high resolution aerial imagery and elevation data in a 3D perspective view to show the the dramatic summit area including the road to the top, the visitor centers, viewpoints, and the many trails in the nearly 7 mile wide steep sided depression, often referred to as a crater.

Creating Beautiful Open-Source Interactive Maps With R and D3
Henry Beimers, NORC at the University of Chicago
Some of the major difficulties in web mapping come from translating your tabular data into the right format for visualization. With the r2d3 R package, creating beautiful interactive online maps using the JavaScript D3 library is just another part of your data processing workflow in R. This talk will discuss how to use R to interface with JavaScript D3 through the r2d3 package to create beautiful interactive maps for the web, R Markdown reports, or Shiny applications in an efficient and fully open source process.

Natural Scene Designer Pro 8
Tom Patterson, US National Park Service (retired)
Natural Scene Designer 8, due for release this autumn for Mac and Windows, has new features useful to cartographers, including: Download Terrain Models – The following DEMs are available through a map interface: GMTED, SRTM, ALOS, Copernicus, Aster, MERIT, ArcticDEM, and REMA. Resolutions range from 1 to 1,000 meters. NAIP Import – Automatically download, unzip, reproject, resample, and overlay high-resolution aerial images on the current DEM. Texture Shade Blending – Add texture shading to 3D scenes, plan oblique relief, and shaded relief. You can control the amount and characteristics of texture shading, and where it occurs on a terrain.

Displacement Vulnerability and Mitigation Tool
Abigail Fleming, University of Miami
The Environmental Justice Clinic (“EJC”) and the Frost Institute for Data Science & Computing at the University of Miami developed the Displacement Vulnerability and Mitigation Tool (“DVMT”), a three-part, web-based tool that uses data analytics to forecast the risk of displacement a proposed development may cause and equip community stakeholders with research-informed mitigation strategies.

Demystifying Cloud Native Geospatial For Working With Data At Scale
William Lyon, Wherobots
As data volumes continue to grow in the geospatial world tooling and data formats from the big data ecosystem are being applied to the geospatial world. This enables more distribution and new types of data analysis, yet can be frustrating when trying to integrate with some GIS workflows. In this talk, we'll examine why cloud-native data formats for geospatial are becoming popular and how to work with them by looking at GeoParquet, STAC, Cloud Optimized GeoTiffs, PMTiles, and Apache Sedona.

How to Improve Your GIS to Graphic Design Workflow
Julia Olson and Sarah Bell, Esri
Many cartographers start their maps in a GIS before exporting into a graphic design program. ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud was designed with these mappers in mind. We will share new capabilities as we demonstrate how we created our Pacific Northwest-based map gallery poster using the ArcGIS Pro-to-Adobe Illustrator workflow. Our demo will incorporate Maps for Adobe features, like automatic symbol replacement, automated symbol library creation, well-organized data visualization, vector tile basemaps, and more!

Join together with other attendees to set up an ad hoc informal gathering on a topic that interests you. Maybe you want to discuss your favorite map projections with fellow enthusiasts, or maybe you're a student who wants to create a space to network with other students and share advice. Reserve the NACIS Commons and add whatever you think our conference is missing. A sign-up sheet will be available on-site and reservations are first come, first served.

The Commons area will have with a handful of chairs for group gatherings. When the room is not in use, the Commons also serves as a quieter space to sit and chat away from the more crowded areas.

Slack channel: #nacis2023-grandstation2

Applying Indigenous Research and Data Practices Panel with Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, Ph.D. and Annita Hetoevehotohke'e Lucchesi
This panel will explore the importance of integrating Indigenous knowledge and data practices into cartography. Speakers will discuss how modern cartographic practices can improve to support Indigenous communities and how considerations for decolonizing cartographic practices help address colonial power dynamics and violence perpetuated via maps. This panel will broadly focus on issues related to data violence, data sovereignty, ethical and equitable collaboration and research, and Indigenous research practices and knowledge.


A Recipe for Ethical Geographic Work with Indigenous Communities
Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, Ph.D. (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Canada
This talk approaches methods and guidelines for decolonial geographic research through a lens of conducting ethical, respectful research with Indigenous communities in human and physical geography, and across the quantitative-qualitative spectrum. Using a historical and contemporary discussion of the entanglement of the discipline of Geography with colonial and imperial structures, along with an overview of potential steps that researchers should bear in mind when engaging with Indigenous communities in research endeavors, this talk works to answer the key questions: What comprises decolonial research? How can researchers in Geography work towards accomplishing it in a way that is attentive to the needs of communities they work with and within, while meeting their own research objectives? Special attention is paid to the unique needs of students and early career scholars.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Cartography for Self-Determination and Indigenous Wellbeing
Annita Hetoevehotohke'e Lucchesi
This presentation explores the intersections of data sovereignty and Indigenous self-determination, and how applying Indigenous data sovereignty principles to cartography can advance Indigenous self-determination and wellbeing. Cartography is often imagined as a centuries-long harmful, settler-imposed practice enabling genocide and land removal; what if we reimagined it as a practice that facilitated Indigenous land (re)connection, lifeways, safety, and healing? In this presentation, Lucchesi will offer her experiences exploring that question as a Cheyenne geographer.

Building the Definitive Draft for River Craft: The John Day Boater's Guide
Gabriel Rousseau & Monic Morin, Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management recently published a comprehensive boater's guide for The John Day River. The John Day drains nearly 8,100 square miles of central and northeast Oregon. It is one of the nation’s longest undammed rivers, 147.5 miles of which were designated as a Wild & Scenic River by Congress in 1988. This talk will take you through the three-year process of field work, data collection, content writing, layout & design, and revision. This guide maps 185 river miles at 1 inch to 1/2 mile and is an invaluable resource for education, navigation, safety, and maintaining a sustainable ecosystem.

Thematic Mapping in Augmented Reality: Challenges and Opportunities
David Retchless, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Augmented reality (AR) platforms are increasingly popular in cartographic research and practice, especially for orientation and navigation. However, the potential of AR techniques for thematic mapping remains underexplored. AR tools: 1) share with thematic mapping an emphasis on making the invisible, visible; but 2) differ from thematic maps in design-relevant ways, including perspective and scale/extent. Drawing on my experience developing thematic maps and AR tools for coastal flooding, I consider challenges and opportunities associated with translating design principles for thematic mapping to the AR context, with a focus on abstraction and prominence of point symbols (but also encompassing other feature types, basemaps, and marginalia).

Mapping the Construction of the Qosh Tepa Canal in Northern Afghanistan
Danielle Henry, BlackSky
The Qosh Tepa Canal is a planned 285km canal diverting water from the Amu Darya River into northern Afghanistan for irrigation, with the goal of making Afghanistan food independent. Roughly 100km of the canal are complete, and progress continues under the Taliban government. BlackSky has been closely monitoring the progress of the canal’s construction using a combination of custom-tasked BlackSky imagery, Sentinel-2 data, commercial satellite imagery, and open-source research. BlackSky’s multifaceted approach to monitoring and mapping the canal has produced novel insights about the canal’s construction, geopolitical impact, and long-term viability.

Coloring Outside of the Lines: Sketch Mapping Fear, Safety, and Community for LGBTQ+ Students Amidst Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation
Natalie Correa, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Over 500 state-level bills were introduced in the US that negatively targeted members in the LGBTQ+ community in 2023. I sought to investigate how introduced and passed legislation impacted how college students think about space. I used sketch mapping and interviews to gather student perceptions of fear, safety, and community within the US. The use of sketch mapping provided direct linkages between where students perceived these characteristics and why they perceived them. I then aggregated the results in ArcGIS Pro to create synthesized maps that showed the areas of fear, safety, and community. My research offers insight on using sketch mapping on a large scale in addition to using sketch mapping to understand perceived realities.

City as Museum: Reimagining Urban Wayfinding and Storytelling
Gurpreet Kaur
The talk explores the concept of a city as a living museum, where each landmark tells a story, turning urban landscapes into engaging narratives that enhance wayfinding. It will showcase how this idea can transform urban exploration, guiding visitors and residents through the city's rich historical and cultural stories via its unique landmarks. An example use case will highlight how users can engage with the city’s stories, making each landmark a portal to the past and a navigation guide in the present.

Globes – an App for the Apple Vision Pro
Evan Thornberry, David Rumsey & Niles Dorn, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries; 
Bernie Jenny, Dilpreet Singh & Kadek Satriadi, Monash University, Melbourne
Globes is a new app for the Apple Vision Pro headset that shows globes at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Libraries. Virtual globes are rendered with unprecedented visual clarity and detail, and they can be freely scaled and positioned. This presentation will demonstrate the features of the Globes app and discuss its development. Additionally, we will explore future applications of augmented reality for visualizing maps and globes, and showcase how tangible globes can be augmented with virtual visualizations.

Creating Thematic Maps with the Help of Generative AI
Kristian Ekenes, Esri
Since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT nearly two years ago, the number of artificial intelligence assistants has exploded in software applications in almost every industry. We'll explore the role generative AI assistants play in creating thematic maps from an end user's natural language. I’ll describe Esri’s approach in building an AI mapping assistant for ArcGIS Online and summarize findings discovered from user testing, research, and the implications it has on mapping workflows moving forward.

Leveraging a Living Atlas of the World
Emily Meriam, Esri
In 2014 Esri’s ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World (LAW) debuted as a community GIS that allowed for sharing across the world, a new kind of “living atlas” of geographic information. The LAW was designed to provide meaningful access to GIS content openly shared and to be an online catalog of authoritative and best available geographic information from individual organizations, partners, and the global GIS community. In this presentation learn how to use this vast collection of geospatial information for cartographic purposes. The maps shown will be from Esri’s founder Jack Dangermond’s first authored book called The Power of Where.

The Past, Present, and Future of Stamen Maps
Alan McConchie, Stamen Design
A decade ago, Stamen Design launched the Toner, Terrain, and Watercolor map styles built on OpenStreetMap data, which soon became an essential part of the open source mapping ecosystem. Last year we partnered with Stadia Maps to create all new versions of the Toner and Terrain maps, based on a modern mapping stack of vector tiles to keep them running for the next generation. In this presentation, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges of redesigning familiar map styles using a totally new set of tools, while still staying true to the well-loved aesthetics of the original maps.

A User Study of Relief Inversion and a Benefit of Sky Models
Patrick Kennelly, Long Island University; Izabela Gołębiowska, Izabela Karsznia & Katarzyna Borczon, University of Warsaw
Relief inversion, the perception that valleys are ridges and vice versa, can occur with shaded relief maps using southern illumination. While previous user studies have documented this effect and looked at lighting directions to avoid, we study whether inversion can be eliminated using multidirectional sky models. 352 participants were asked to look at shaded relief maps and identify valleys and ridges, compare elevation of points, identify elevation change of slopes, and associate elevation profiles. Results with shaded relief maps illuminated from 1) one direction from NNW 2) sky models from NNW or 3) sky models from SSW show no statistically significant difference, while 4) one direction from SSW led to significantly worse accuracy. Additionally, no difference in response time may indicate users make no attempt to mentally re-invert relief.

Bringing Transparency to Freelance Mapmaking
Daniel Huffman, somethingaboutmaps
Freelancing mapping can be a lonely business. Without regular insight into our peers, we're left wondering if we're making the right business decisions. Should I make everyone sign a contract? Should I charge a flat rate or hourly? And the biggest one: how much should I charge my clients? It's easy to be uncertain about what we're doing if we don't know what's typical for our peers. Since 2018, Daniel Huffman & Aly Ollivierre have been conducting a biennial survey of freelance cartographers in order to bring transparency to the business, and help all of us thrive. In this presentation, we'll have a look at some of the results of the last several years, both the expected and the surprising.

Discussing Current Limits and Future Opportunities in Mobile Map Design
Lily Houtman, Penn State University
Designing maps for mobile devices is increasingly important in our modern work. Following a preliminary study focused on mobile thematic maps in the context of data journalism, I highlight a few key limitations in this area of research: types of interactivity, time constraints, simultaneous design, and ability to conduct user testing. In addition to presenting conclusions from my previous work, I describe potential avenues for future work on the same subject. I plan to make audience engagement a significant portion of my talk, gaining knowledge from currently practicing data journalists and others who work on mobile thematic maps to help inform my future research questions.

Digital Diary: Writing Down Your Notes and Your Process
Rachel Stevenson, Colorado - Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 
When writing code, one can often add comments about their process as they write their script or program.
When developing a map product, there lacks this inability to track comments throughout the map-making process.
While yes, task tracking exists in ArcGIS Pro. I find it lacks the ability capture my thought process.
One of my best practices is to track my process through details notes.
In this presentation, I'll share with you how I track my map-making process and why you should consider making this practice apart of your workflow.

Defining a Brand of Cartography
Lee France, onX Maps
In late 2022, onX maps, a company focused on mapping recreational pursuits for millions of outdoor enthusiasts, decided to invest big into cartography. They formed a team dedicated to defining the look and feel of their foundational product: the map. In this talk we'll dive into that team's journey to discovering what it means to define a brand of cartography, and how to anchor around that brand to create beautiful map designs that are highly functional and tailored to the needs of specific user groups.

Are You Mappier than a 5th Grader?
Dave McLaughlin, Penn State University
Building on a Career Day presentation about the life of a Geospatial Data Visualization Software Engineer, I developed and facilitated a 90-minute mapping workshop for thirty-five fifth graders. Working with colored pencils and paper, and using Beescape (beescape.psu.edu) as the model, we started with some creative cartography, learned how to encode research data from biologists onto our maps, then investigated the landscape to determine the most beneficial areas for pollinators. See photos from the session, and hear about the process and lessons learned from putting together a reusable lesson plan to inspire the next generation of cartographers.

Evaluating Beescape NexGen
Anthony Robinson, Lily Houtman, Dave McLaughlin & Christina Grozinger, The Pennsylvania State University
Beescape NexGen makes it possible to visualize pollinator health metrics across landscapes. As part of an iterative user-centered design process, we evaluated a Beescape prototype and found many areas for improvement. This work led to a comprehensive re-design. In this talk we report results from a recent usability and utility evaluation with beekeepers and the re-designed Beescape NexGen. Our findings make clear that our iterative design process has benefited its usability and utility, and we have clear directions now for how to support its continued evolution.

Join fellow NACIS members for lunch on Friday! We're reserving tables at several nearby restaurants, with each one led by a veteran NACIS member to talk about anything that comes up. It's a great opportunity for first-time attendees or those who want to network or be social. Sign-up sheets will be available at the registration desk beginning Thursday. Sign-up for a group by 10:00am Friday to get a seat in the restaurant you like!

Check out some of the local dining establishments! A map is located on the back of the printed program available at the registration desk.

Andrew Stauffer, Bethany Walker, Alex Kaufman & Marcelle Caturia, U.S. Geological Survey
In 2022, the National Geospatial Program and the National Geospatial Technical Operations Center launched an application called topoBuilder that allows users to request customized topographic maps, referred to as OnDemand Topos. Currently, topoBuilder offers 1:24,000-scale and 1:100,000-scale map products. The USGS anticipates expanding the product catalog to more scales and use cases , while enhancing The National Map data for automated topographic mapping . Join us in this panel discussion as we overview the current state of topoBuilder and our near-term roadmap. We hope to engage in a discussion about USGS topographic mapping and gather input on authoritative data and citizen-mapping needs.

How to Write a Cartography Tutorial
Heather Smith, Esri
I’ve been writing cartography tutorials at Esri for almost six years. I’d like to share some of the methods, tricks, and principles that I’ve learned and employed over that time, including:
1) How to keep a tutorial short without sacrificing learning objectives.
2) How to go beyond button-clicking and explain how to make decisions.
3) How cartography skills translate to writing skills. (How becoming a better writer made me a better cartographer and vice versa.)

Cartography as Spatial Information Practices
Jack Swab, University of Kentucky
Definitions of cartography typically revolve around the construction and study of visual representations of geographic phenomena. In this presentation, I add to this definition by advancing the idea of cartography as the study of spatial information practices. Understanding how individuals find, evaluate, and use maps (and other forms of spatial information) is critical to advancing both the construction and study of maps. Although aspects of a spatial information practice exist in cartography currently—such as UI/UX or wayfinding research—by more readily centering a pluralistic view of spatial information practices we can expand cartography beyond the study of the visual.

Changes You Can Make to Your Workflows to Make More Accessible Maps
Vanessa Knoppke-Wetzel, GreenInfo Network
At GreenInfo Network, we have spent time in the last few years making changes to our interactive production workflows to improve accessibility in our web products, and we also continue to create accessible print maps for our clients and partners. I will share some of what we have learned about accessibility design for the web from the last few years, as well as share out tips and tricks from our experience with print products as well.

Creating an Organizational Cartography Guide
Gray McKenna, Washington State Department of Natural Resources
The National Audubon Society is a hemisphere-wide conservation organization that is known for its strong visual identity. Many Audubon employees are GIS users who regularly produce maps for outreach, planning, and advocacy. However, until recently, there were no Audubon-specific resources for designing maps. To address this need, we created a Cartography Guide using ArcGIS Hub. This guide empowers users of all skill levels to create high-quality, accessible maps that integrate Audubon’s visual identity. This presentation will cover how we created this guide to be responsive to our users’ wide range of needs, and the impact this guide has had on Audubon’s cartographic communications.

A Retrospective on a Career in Museum Mapping and GIS
Daniel Cole, Smithsonian Institution
For the past 39 years, I have served as the Smithsonian's cartographer. I started working with the Anthropology department at NMNH, researching, designing and creating maps for the Handbook of North American Indians and related work. In 1990-91, I moved to serving the entire Smithsonian for building GIS at the Institution while also providing cartographic work for any staff needing it for their publications and work in science, art, and history. Since 1999, I have also been involved with exhibits’ staff as well having contributed maps and geospatial data displays for over 20 exhibits in 7 museums, the Folklife Festival, SI Archives, and SITES. This presentation will review my past and present work until my retirement in December 2024.

Towards a Cartographic Ethics: Summarizing and Synthesizing 35 Years of Academic Debate
Lucinda Roberts, University of Oregon
In 1990, J.B. Harley, asked, “Can There be a Cartographic Ethics?” He asked that question amidst a period of theoretical angst for the cartographic community, where, following the invention, development, and commercialization of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cartographers were left wondering how new technologies would upend traditional workflows. Nearly 35 years later, we have not come closer to answering Harley’s question with an actionable set of professional ethics. As the technology we use to construct maps rapidly develops and forces cartographers to update their workflows, the academic theory underpinning mapmaking has changed too. Emerging technologies are once again posing a paradigm shift to our standard workflows, the proliferation of generative AI pushes us towards articulating a practical cartographic ethics. This presentation seeks to summarize and synthesize debates on ethics in the cartographic literature, to ground existing calls for professional cartographic ethics in the existing debates and theory over the last 35 years.

“The Map is Hers”: Gender and Copyright in Early 20th Century Los Angeles
Christina Dando, University of Nebraska Omaha
In the United States, maps and charts have had the possibility of copyright protection since 1783, but not all mapmakers take this step. In Los Angeles in the 1910s, Laura Whitlock, a woman mapmaker, and N. Bowditch Blunt, a draftsman, both copyrighted their maps. Blunt would go on to illegally copy Whitlock’s work and Whitlock sued him for copyright infringement, resulting in a precedent-setting case. Why did they copyright their work? How did they know to take this step? What might copyright have represented to them?

Unearthing Geotechnical Knowledge in the Library
Chris Salvano, LA Metro Transportation Research Library & Archive
Since 1962, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) has been performing geotechnical studies throughout Los Angeles County to support its subway and light-rail transportation initiatives. Beginning in late 2023, the LA Metro Library began surfacing spatial data from these historical reports and mapping them using GIS. This talk will discuss the library-led initiative to map this data as a means to help answer spatial inquiry-type reference questions, improve discoverability of Metro’s geotechnical knowledge, and better meet the information-seeking behaviors of Metro engineers. New avenues of potential collaboration between the library, the GIS unit, and engineers will also be addressed.

A New Look at Sketch Maps
Michael Peterson, University of Nebraska at Omaha
The sketch map is an externalization or translation of a mental map, an internal coding of reality that we depend upon to both navigate in a local environment and process information about the world at large. Our every movement and our thoughts about the spatial world are dependent upon these internal representations. They are formed primarily by experiencing the environment directly, or indirectly through maps. The question examined here is how sketch maps, and the mental maps on which they are based, are themselves influenced by maps. Do they represent the foundation of cartography?

OpenHistoricalMap: the Most Open-Ended Map in History
Minh Nguyễn, OpenHistoricalMap
OpenHistoricalMap (openhistoricalmap.org) is a time machine brought to you by the community that built OpenStreetMap. Zoom into any neighborhood in the world, turn to any time period in history, and there you will find the same micromapping detail you’ve come to expect in OpenStreetMap or – more likely – an utterly blank invitation to help build the most open-ended map in history, one story at a time.

Untangling Rhode Island’s Forest Habitat: Interactive Mapping at the Confluence of Art and Cartography
Quinn Cowing, Brown University
In designing a final project for my cartography course, I scoured journals and grew enamored with embroidered maps. Specifically, I was inspired by colcha embroidered maps from the San Luis Valley. These maps weave geography with cultural sights and rich history to make accurate representations of local areas. While these artworks heighten the cultural significance of maps, I wanted my embroidery to elevate map interactivity. Therefore, I embroidered the different layers of my map of Rhode Island forest types on separate sheets of tulle. The map viewer is thus able to interact with the map by selecting which layers they would like to view. This work ultimately melds art and cartography to provide an exciting aspect of user interaction.

Teaching Atlas Project Management: Lessons and Reflections
P. William Limpisathian & Alicia Adelle Iverson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In the dynamic landscape of cartographic education and project management, how do we effectively prepare students for the multifaceted demands of modern map production? Beyond mastering cartographic techniques, students must also acquire the skills to take ownership, manage concurrent tasks, and collaborate seamlessly—a blend of competencies often overlooked in traditional cartographic curricula. This talk reflects on the challenges and insights from developing and teaching an exploratory atlas production and project management course. Drawing from our in-class experiences, we explore strategies that bridge the curricular gap between cartographic excellence and effective project management. Our discussion encompasses practical tips, pitfalls to avoid, and successful approaches to modeling and managing a complex atlas project in the confines of a classroom.

Understanding Lhasa through Declassified Spy Satellite Images
Tsering Shawa, Princeton University
Lhasa is the spiritual and political center of Tibet. It is believed that in around 633 AD Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo moved his capital from the Yarlung valley to Lhasa. Before it became the capital of Tibet, it was a desolate and swampy valley. Today Lhasa is one of the largest and most vibrant cities in Tibet. In this talk I will use declassified spy satellite images and maps to understand the extent of old Lhasa and identify important historical sites that do not exist now.

Where Did They Go? Mapping Out-Migration From Mammoth Cave National Park, 1920-1940
Collins Eke
The 52,830-acre Mammoth Cave National Park, located in the karst region of south-central Kentucky, was formally established in July of 1941, culminating a nearly three-decade process of park creation that displaced several thousands of residents of the proposed park area. Based on a sample taken from the 1920 U.S. Census, the residents’ migration destinations in the 1930 and 1940 censuses were mapped in a geographic information system. The data collected was represented through chloropleth maps and graduated circle maps. Maps were also constructed to identify destinations of specific sociodemographic subgroups of migrants — Black, White, homeowners, and renters.

Mapping Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai Mountains: Transitions in Cartography from 1994 to 2010
James Meacham, University of Oregon
The high valleys of the Altai Mountains of Mongolia contain some of the richest concentrations of rock art and ancient monuments in North Asia. Starting in 1994, an international team assembled to study these complexes. During a 16-year period of annual field work, rapid advances in available geospatial base data and mapping technology allowed the team’s cartographers to radically improve the mapping of the region’s landscape and archaeology. This presentation covers the evolution of the maps and data visualizations from the research, which ultimately contributed to the complexes’ designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Mapping Vulnerabilities: Projected Extreme Heat Risk for Southern Mobile Home Residents
Laura Diaz-Villaquiran, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance
Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States, and Southern communities are particularly vulnerable to it. This research examines the geospatial relationship between projected heat increases in the U.S. South and the prevalence of mobile housing units. Preliminary findings indicate that counties in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi are highly vulnerable. Mobile home residents, who often face concentrated disadvantages such as high energy costs, low incomes, and rural isolation are particularly at risk. This research highlights the need for targeted interventions to leverage hazard resiliency and energy efficiency in these communities.

Margot Dale Carpenter, Hartdale Maps; Erin Greb, Erin Greb Cartography; David Nuttall, Artimaps; Daniel Huffman (moderator)

Come be part of a moderated discussion/Q&A session with four independent cartographers (plus a bonus fifth playing the role of moderator!). Each panelist, with unique backgrounds and experiences, is excited to give you a look into our world of freelancing. Thinking about starting your own business but not sure how? Already freelancing, but need some advice? Come ask us! Plus topics that all self-employed cartographers contend with on a regular basis - clients, expenses, time management, finding a niche, and whatever else you want to talk about. Wherever you are on your freelancing journey, you’ll get some valuable insights, or at least be entertained by a bunch of friendly cartographers chatting about what they love doing for a living.

Mount St. Helens Historic Topography Project
Joe Bard, U.S. Geological Survey
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980, dramatically changed the mountain and the areas adjacent to the volcano. Since the eruption, the U.S. Geological Survey Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) has been documenting the topographic changes of the volcano to build a catalog of elevation datasets. Recently, this work has focused on developing DEMs from historic topographic maps. In 2022, CVO formed a co-op with the Portland Community College GIS program to engage students in this effort. In this talk, we will detail the project, our progress to date, and hear from students who have co-authored these products.

Challenging White Innocence Through an Atlas of US National Landmarks
Alethea Steingisser, Erik Steiner, Laura Pulido, Sophia Ford & Jenna Witzleben, University of Oregon
The InfoGraphics Lab is working on a new atlas – Monumental Denial: U.S. Cultural Memory and White Innocence – that explores how the more than 2,400 United States National Historic Landmarks (NHL) systematize and reflect embedded cultural narratives of white supremacy and colonialization. Through maps, data graphics, photographs, and topical essays, the atlas reveals how NHLs reinforce white innocence and deny the cultural memory of marginalized people. From the official site nomination materials to the formal public messaging at the sites, more than 90% of NHLs fail to acknowledge the racially-based events, people, and processes that are key to understanding the importance of the sites in the context of U.S. history.

Making Maps More Accessible at the U.S. National Park Service
Jake Coolidge, U.S. National Park Service / Colorado State University
As a consensus around best practices for accessible interactive maps emerges, it’s up to cartographers like myself, working with the US National Park Service, to apply these best practices. I’ll review the guidance we followed, how we tested our current maps for accessibility, made plans to address numerous issues, and began the process of remediating existing maps. This long-overdue work remains in the initial stages and is ongoing. I aim to emphasize that no matter how large and daunting the task may seem, it is possible to build partnerships and make real progress toward maps that work better for everyone.

The Junk Consortium: Cartography and World-Building
Jeffrey Linn, Conspiracy of Cartographers
As part of the Junk Consortium, I collaborated with faculty to teach world-building to students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The Consortium is a group of 15 universities, led by production designer Alex McDowell, imagining far-future societies built on the detritus of our current world. Alex has designed a framework for fictional societies--using mandalas to envision rich cultures--integrating politics, economy, philosophy, and environment. With a map of the world as the foundation, richly imagined societies can be created. I will present the techniques I use for creating fictional geographies, Alex's techniques for world-building, and the societies imagined by students based on these techniques and my maps.

Time Travel with Cartography: Mapping Philadelphia’s Urban Landscape Evolution Across Two Centuries
Emily Zhou, University of Pennsylvania
In this presentation, I will delve into the process of reproducing old maps and rendering the early streetscapes of Philadelphia from an urban design project of mine focused on historic preservation. Drawing from historical land use maps, photographs, architectural data, and oral histories, we will compare the characteristics of maps and urban landscapes spanning three distinct eras in Philadelphia. Through this comparative analysis, I will discuss the various design decisions made at each stage of the project, which include choosing the texture, color, line-work, patterns, and typography. I will also outline the overall workflow from McNeel Rhino 3D to Adobe Software and share eight hands-on tips and tricks for designing historical maps in Illustrator as well as incorporating vintage effects into your work in Photoshop.

The Impact of WWII on Cartography
Judith Tyner, CSU Long Beach, emerita
Prior to WWII, cartography was a “mere tool” for geographers, not a discipline. There was only one American textbook, and few universities and colleges offered courses in cartography. There were also no courses in air photo interpretation and map reading. During and after the war, the number of universities that offered cartography classes increased dramatically and the subject had morphed from a tool to a discipline. This paper examines the impact of the war on the field over a short period of time.

Will-o’-the-Wisp, Map Collection Tours, Hauntology and Deep Time Spectres
Larry Laliberte, University of Alberta
In renewing ways to navigate institutional spaces of maps, and their containers, recent William C. Wonders map collection engagement workshops incorporated tactile ambience, aurals, and experiential movement to open up ways to re-read cartographic renderings as apparitions, situating their re-inscription, and retention in the spectres of deep time. By beckoning maps through hauntology – a praxis that disrupts the fabric of the normalized and operates in the fault lines of authorized histories, in-person tours construct terrains that interrogate and counter settler cartographies inhabiting a spatial corpus of colonial history. A history that continues to confer power, and haunt the landscape.

Mapping History Using Digital Tools
Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen
It's easy to think that our current maps represent a 1:1 relationship with the world as it is now; Google and others have given us tools to be able to navigate so effortlessly that the problem of mapping seems solved. Going back in time, though, presents a different set of challenges. Historical maps and spatial representations operate according to a different set of rules than our current maps do, and much can be lost in translation. Using examples from Stamen projects for the Alan Turing Institute, Columbia University, the Getty Institute, the University of Richmond, and Densho's maps of Japanese-American internment camps, among others, this talk will offer an overview of the problem space of historical mapping in a digital context, as well as provide examples of solutions arrived at through hard-won grapplings with sometimes difficult histories.

Dynamic Deployment and Mirroring of PostGIS Geospatial Data Repositories using Kubernetes, Helm and Other Open Source Technologies - a System Component-Based Approach to Geospatial Data Sharing and Publication Chris Mader, Timothy Norris & Julio Perez, University of Miami
Online GIS repositories (implemented using technologies such as ArcGIS Hub, for example) typically support two models for data access: data download; and API support. Here will we present a system component model for data sharing based on Kubernetes and PostGIS. We are using this approach at the University of Miami as part of the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) Geospatial Digital Special Collections (GDSC) data resource. This approach enables the replication of fully functional sets of PostGIS databases combined with API services that can be used to build de-coupled software applications, as well as for other purposes where mirroring pieces of a repository is beneficial. We will also present a quick case study of an actual software application, that used replicated components, for illustration purposes.

Discovering and Explaining Ecological Connectivity
Mir Rodriguez Lombardo, Almanaque Azul foundation
Awareness of ecological connectivity has become critical in a rapidly changing world and increasing fragmentation of natural areas. I will talk about how we met the challenges of not only creating a high-resolution map of functional ecological connectivity for Panama, but also of how to effectively communicate the results. Making the map began by assembling various data sources, then surveying experts and finally many iterations of running the data through a connectivity algorithm (Omniscape). We interpreted the results informed by environmental threats, as well as local land and water defense struggles, then liaised with teachers to created a digital and paper map of "natural corridors" intended to be used in the classroom.

Handling Complex Content within Georeferenced Historical Atlases
Adam Cox, Healthy Regions & Policies Lab, UIUC
While georeferencing a single map is an easy one-off process, applying the work across a whole atlas (or multi-volume set) is a challenging task--especially when pages have multiple insets and the atlas contains more than one category of maps. How do you structure this work, and create cohesive output? This presentation will describe the novel hierarchical approach within OldInsuranceMaps.net, a crowdsourced web georeferencing platform designed around the complexities of Sanborn fire insurance maps. Facilitating the creation of seamless mosaics from this collection has resulted in a robust, abstract workflow that could be applied to any other maps or collections as well.

Using Old Maps for New Insights on America’s Cities
Riley Champine, University of Richmond
Given the widespread attention redlining has received in recent years, some might think studying old maps of housing discrimination has grown stale. But even after a decade of work by the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), fresh documents, stories, and data continue to surface, leading to the release of the third version of their flagship project, Mapping Inequality. This talk will explore the latest features and design enhancements of the project website, illustrating how they add depth to an expanded collection of redlining documents. We'll also discuss the DSL's latest project and our efforts to incorporate detailed Sanborn fire insurance maps into the study of urban health disparities in redlined areas.

Continuing a Classic: Map Use, 9th Edition
Patrick Kennelly, Aileen Buckley, Esri; & Jon Kimerling
No other cartography textbook has withstood the test of time like Map Use: Reading Analysis, Interpretation. Since its debut in 1978―nearly a half-century ago―it has remained a stalwart companion for instructors, students, self-learners, and professionals. Map Use, 9th Edition, allows us to not only update the book with some of the best maps recently made, and produce the book in both print and e-book format, but it also provides us with a unique perspective into what has changed over the years―and what has remained the same. It allows us to evaluate what is currently most important in map use and mapmaking so that we can, in effect, present the state of the art in those areas of our field. Yet, for all that has changed over the years, the underlying philosophy of Map Use remains the same―a good map user must understand, at a basic level, what goes into the making of a map.

Make your cartographic fashion statement with swag from the NACIS Shop! All proceeds go to supporting popular NACIS initiatives including student travel grants, contest awards, and video streaming. Feeling inspired? Submit your design at nacis.org/initiatives/nacis-apparel/submit-t-shirt-artwork/ to make a map-tastic impact!

Items for sale:

2024 conference t-shirt ($25)
Enamel Map Monster pin ($6)
Map Monster Sticker ($3)
Nacis Luggage Tag ($4)

Credit card payments only at this time.

Enjoy a relaxing dinner with your fellow mapmakers, cheer on the winners of the student map & poster competitions, and learn more about the Indigenous land where we are gathered.

Keynote speaker Prof. Danica Sterud Miller from the University of Washington—Tacoma will discuss the City of Tacoma v. Andrus: Tacoma's (Losing) Fight to End Federal Recognition of the Puyallup Tribe. 

Slack channel: #nacis2024-banquet

Dr. Danica Sterud Miller (Puyallup Tribe of Indians) is a distinguished educator renowned for her expertise in American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
Currently, she holds the esteemed position of Co-Director at the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) at the University of Washington Tacoma. Dr. Miller is an associate professor at the Culture, Arts and Communication division of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.
Her notable achievements include the receipt of UW Tacoma’s Distinguished Teaching Award, recognizing her innovative pedagogical approaches in Native American studies. Dr. Miller’s teaching methodologies incorporate immersive experiences such as field trips, captivating storytelling, and hands-on learning techniques.

Join the fun in a longstanding NACIS tradition -- our own very mappy version of Jeopardy! Contestants can sign up for a team at the registration desk. Winners take home prizes and we all leave having learned more than when we arrived. If you prefer to watch from the sidelines, join the audience to cheer on (and heckle) the contestants in this highly entertaining show of geography trivia - with a special new twist in honor of Dennis McClendon.