Cartography

Summarizing a decade of cartographic research in a short chapter is difficult: bias is inevitable, randomness is indefensible, breadth is tricky, and coherence is essential. Rather than attempt a broad, shallow survey, we chose to focus on some of the period’s significant conceptual frameworks, and relate each model to one or more related research papers published since A. Jon Kimerling (1989) summarized cartographic research for the first volume of Geography in America. This has been a transition period in which the discipline has witnessed several significant changes, including: (1) the nearly complete automation of the cartographic process and a proliferation of maps produced by desktop mapping systems and GISs; (2) the inclusion of significant amounts of core cartographic research—such as terrain modeling, geographic data structures, generalization, and interpolation—within the growing discipline of GIS; and (3) the wide adoption of the term “geographic visualization” to describe the dynamic, interactive component of cartography. These developments and the migration of more and more cartographic interests into the newly created discipline of GIS have raised concern about whether our discipline would survive. These doubts are offset by growing recognition that research and education on representational issues in GIS is critical, and that research in map design, symbolization, and generalization cannot be neglected. Cartography remains an independent discipline. Our two journals, Cartography and Geographic Information Science (recently renamed with Science replacing Systems) and Cartographic Perspectives, are thriving. American cartographic researchers also publish their work in Cartographica, GeoInfo Systems, GIS World, and the International Journal of Geographic Information Science. The Mapping Science Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the recently formed Committee on Geography represent our interests at the national level, as do the Cartography and Geographic Information Society (a member organization of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping), the North American Cartographic Information Society, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, and the AAG’s Cartography Specialty Group. During the decade our educators, researchers, and essayists have published many textbooks and monographs, including the sixth edition of Elements of Cartography (Robinson et al. 1995); several new editions of Borden Dent’s Cartography: Thematic Map Design (most recently 1999); Terry Slocum’s Thematic Cartography and Visualization (1999); John Snyder’s (1993) seminal work on projections, Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections; Alan MacEachren’s How Maps Work (1995); Denis Wood’s (1992) social critique of cartography, The Power of Maps; and a series of books by Mark Monmonier, including Maps with the News: The Development of American Journalistic Cartography (1989b), How to Lie with Maps (1991, rev. 1996), Mapping it Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences (1993), Drawing the Line: Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy (1995), Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America (1997), and Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize the Weather (1999).