Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Generalization
How have irrelevant details for the map's purpose
been filtered out? How have details relevant to a
map's purpose been emphasized? How have lines,
points, areas, and content been handled?
Conventions
Conventions are common and important for good reasons that have been
highlighted earlier. The number of choices available—and the concerns that
go along with them—may seem a barrier for activities involving geographic
information and maps, but due to established conventions it is actually quite
easy to read and create geographic information and maps. In most cases,
conventions have already dealt with issues long before you have begun to
read or create a map. Pragmatically representation and communication dis-
tinguishes three types of conventions:
Things most people anywhere in the world know
•
Cultural influences and culturally influenced knowledge
•
Disciplinary or professional understanding and knowledge
•
For example, most adults comprehend that water is symbolically repre-
sented by the color blue. Even when you look at a map with text you cannot
read, you will probably be able to distinguish water areas based on their
color. However, examples like this are very, very rare. Culture exerts a power-
ful inf luence on how most people understand colors and conventions. For
example, the color red, which for most people in Western countries symbol-
izes danger (e.g., traffic lights and fire), is the color for success in Chinese
culture. The greatest number of conventions, however, come from disciplin-
ary or professional subcultures. Disciplinary or professional groups have
often developed complicated formal and informal codes for representation.
Sometimes the symbols become ubiquitous through use—for example, inter-
state highway symbols in the United States—but many remain specific to dis-
ciplines—for example, pipe line symbols used by sanitary engineers and field
crews. Often effective geographic information and map “reading” and cre-
ation go hand-in-hand with an introduction to these conventions. In some
countries—for example, Great Britain, South Africa, and Switzerland—chil-
dren in school learn about their country's topographic map symbols and
have little problem throughout the rest of their life turning to the detailed
maps made in these countries to orient themselves.
Scale and Accuracy
A key component of cartographic communication is scale. Usually scale is
“defined” by established conventions, rules, or possibly even laws. It has
important consequences for accuracy. Scale can serve as a proxy for more
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