Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2 The Topographic Map
The modern topographical map has a precision that earlier efforts struggled to
achieve. In terms of Southern Fiordland, the first settler maps left those lands that
were not visited—or at least the land which could not be gazed on—as blanks on
the map.
These blank spaces sparked the would-be settler's imagination. Their emptiness
suggested both opportunity and an imperative to act before the land was all 'taken
up'. Figure
1
shows a section of a subsequent map in which an unsurveyed seg-
ment is marked ''unexplored at present''. Such labeling clearly conveys the tem-
porary
nature
of
this
condition,
while
also
acting
as
a
prompt
for
further
investigation.
This blankness, it has been argued, also served other deeper purposes. Colonial
historian John Noyes writes that the production of empty space was ''one of the
most important spatial strategies of capitalism in the age of empire'' (Noyes
1992
,
p 7). For a blank area not only recorded a space that was empty of the explorer's
knowledge, but also implied that it was empty of all knowledge, and fostered ''the
notion of a socially empty space'' in which indigenous people were absent (Harley
2001
, p 60). In the blank interiors was a land ''fertile yet vacant, auspicious yet
undeveloped'' (Clayton
2000
, p 389), its qualities in some respects not dissimilar
to contemporary visions of wilderness which present these landscapes as unspoilt,
remote and primeval. It is for this reason that Harley demands cartographic silence
be regarded as an active human performance: ''that which is absent from maps is
as much a proper field of inquiry as that which is present'' (Harley
2001
, p 86).
New Zealand's recent topographical maps give no immediate impression that
they may contain critical silences. Figure
2
is an extract taken from New Zealand's
1:50,000 scale 260 topographical map series. Through the application of ortho-
photographic imaging techniques, it allows information of a previously unattain-
able detail and precision. Clearly identified is the course of rivers, the expanse of
forests, and the form of mountainous ridges. Yet instead of the particular quality of
these features, what is described is their size, location and boundary. Consider for
a moment the left hand edge of Fig.
2
, west of the Waitutu River, where the
contour lines have been removed. Despite earlier studies in the region identifying
thirty-two distinct categories of forest (Nicholls
1977
), the most recent topo-
graphical maps renders all native forests, across the whole country, as a single tone
of color. Given that the one third of Aotearoa New Zealand that is set aside as
public conservation lands is principally made up of native forest, the prevalence of
Pantone
PMS 367 green is almost all-encompassing. Map upon map in the
1:50,000 scale 260 topographical map series is a monochromatic expanse of this
green tone. All that can be noted is where the native forest ends and either indi-
vidual trees, forest clearings, or scattered scrub begins.
Instead of an ecological interpretation of the forest, with its localized varieties
of canopies, species interactions, soil conditions and climatic conditions, what is
mapped is the almost binary presence or absence of a generalized attribute. What
