Sunday, March 11, 2018

Isaritmic Mapping

This week was all about Isarithmic Mapping and with that we focused on continuous tones and hypsometric tints.  We even looked at how to add contour lines to our maps, with a focus on adding them to the hypsometric tints map. 

Continuous tones maps use unclassified data and plots it across a color spectrum (grey-scale can be used as well).  This helps show what each data point is in each location and is primarily useful in creating elevation, population, heat, and other maps that display similar types of data. 

Hypsometric maps, on the other hand, use data that has been classified into different groups.  This is also the type of map that people would more easily identify as they see them frequently in weather reports.  That's right, the kind of data that works best are different kinds of weather phenomena, to include temperatures and precipitation rates. 

So that takes us to the map I created this week.  What you see is a map of Washington State and the average annual amount of precipitation using hypsometric mapping with contour lines added as well.  The data that is being displayed was derived from Oregon State University's PRISM model which, in this case was, used by the US Department of Agriculture to display these precipitation totals.  What is most interesting about the PRISM model is that it better takes in account mountainous terrain where other models didn't.  Because of this, the PRISM model has become a widely used model by thousands of agencies, universities, and companies worldwide. 

Without further ado, here is this week's map:


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