Google Maps to Campsites in Puerto Rico

I want to go camping. I do not want to have to figure out where x,y,z campsite is located, as I do not have a mental map as of yet of all of PR. So I created a google map. Blue is beach campsite; green is forest campsite. Click on any marker to get reservation info. Yeah, yeah, some of it is in Spanish and I didn't translate, but you'll need to know Spanish if you contact some of the offices to take out a permit for various campsites (specifically DRNA sites). This does not (as of yet) include private campsites.

Info came from the following sites:

• Acampar es toda una experiencia from Puerto Rico de Aventura: the Magazine for the Adventure Traveller
• Areas de Acampar from Zee Magazine (online) - very nice descriptions
• and Conoce a Puerto Rico Camping Page

Using Maps to Convey Information

I contract with an excursion company that does not have a physical address; Instead, we have a mobile office. But for one of our excursions we do consistently meet in the same spot, however, my boss tells me that guests are always confused by it, so, she asked me to create a map.

I read this great article on one illustrator's map designing process. Then I searched through quite a few tutorials (ex. http://inkscapetutorials.org/?s=pen) and youtube videos on the open source alternative to Adobe Illustrator. I also got to learn about the open source map data provider Open Street Map. All in all this was a fun, simple project to learn how to use the software and build a map that will hopefully help clear our guests doubts about where to go for their tour.

I'm still awaiting approval, we'll perhaps change some of the colors and text, but this is the general idea.

Making More Maps

So yesterday my boss says to me, "Necesito cuadrar cuantas millas y cuanto tiempo para hacer una excursion en bici:

1. saliendo de la Ceiba, 
2. para la Laguna Kiani, 
3. dando la vuelta por los bunkers, 
4. bajando a las ruinas del central Playa Grande, 
5. regresando a la costa norte, 
6. pasando por Rompeolas 
7. y terminando en la Ceiba."

So I swapped in my clipless pedals, put fresh batteries in my Garmin GPSmap 62 unit and went for a ride. As it turns out, for a 14 mile ride that was totally fun, hit all the great spots and was fairly moderate with only one toughie hill that was toward the end. Two hours later I plug my Garmin into my computer, spend some time puzzling through the instructions at GPSVisualizer (not because they are hard, just because it was my first time and I was learning some new terminology) and at the end of the day, I created this: 

After all that work, I deserve a treat. Like chocolate! Next step is to add pictures! But I'm going to do that tomorrow.

Making Maps

A friend of mine owns a water sports business in the Caribbean and I wanted to help her out with creating some maps to show the location of one of her excursions and to display the coral reefs surrounding the island. (Actually, now that I think about it, it would be great to create an interactive map where you can see corals, sea grass beds, limestone cliffs, mangrove ecosystems and so on and so forth with the various coastal and marine habitats of interest. A data manipulation skill to learn for the future.)

So in pursuit of creating the map, I looked up GIS software and of course the daddy of it all is the US Geological Survey's The National Map page for downloading pre-existing maps and The National Map Viewer for creating custom maps. I'll admit, after taking up 15 of the 30 minutes max I wanted to spend on this little project just exploring the features and lingo of these tools, I decided that the USGS NM and NMV were more high tech and less user friendly than I wanted. So I went looking for an easier user interface (note, I didn't say better)...

And I found the National Geographic MapMaker Interactive tool which allowed me to do everything I wanted, like draw on the map, zoom in, choose a satellite version (vs. topographic or street map) of the island, everything I was looking for initially... except download an image ( you could download a pdf, which I suppose could be converted to an image, etc, etc. but I wanted it now! Thank you, MS Windows, for the PrtSc function but then I needed to crop out the window, so my "workaround" still involved work.)

Here's the route my friends take for one of their snorkeling trips:

After I created that map, I then got all excited to see where all the coral reefs are located around Vieques Island and found the excellent tool ReefGIS by ReefBase, which is a database used by several international coral monitoring networks with funding by the United Nations Foundation. Below is a map displaying corals by their depth.

Light purple is shallow reefs, mid purple is mixed shallow/deep reefs, and dark purple is deep reef. Unfortunately, the actual depths were not included in the map, but from my snorkeling experience, I can say the mixed depth reef ranged from 8 - 20 feet deep. After checking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Conservation Program page, I learned that corals may grow to depths of over 200 ft and that shallow reefs may be considered up to 90 feet in depth. Wow! But then that makes me want to question the map's data and what ranges were set. Oh, well, at least it identifies location of corals around Vieques. Enjoy.

Learning the RC: History Bibs

The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature edited by Norton (016.9 AME 3rd ed v. 1-2) covers books and articles on "every field of historical scholarship" from 1961 through 1992. There is one section on "Science, Technology and Medicine," however the majority of the bibliography is organized around subjects such as the "Theory and Practice in Historical Study," "World History," and various countries and recognized regions in political geography. Each entry includes a basic citation and a 1-3 sentence abstract about the article.

The Dictionary of Historic Documents by Kohn (016.909 KOH) is a list with a brief description of historic documents that have influenced people and events. It skews toward Western history from the past through the date of publication (1991). There is a bibliography of related readings to the documents organized around organized around countries or geographic regions and there is an Index of titles and authors of the documents. There is no subject search to the documents.

Maps of Texas: 1527-1900 complied by Day (of maps cataloged prior to 1964) (016.912 DAY) is a list of maps in the collection of the Texas State Archives in date order (of period represented) along with the title of the Map, its call number and a brief description of the contents of the maps. No actual maps are in this book. This small book also includes an index of titles in alphabetical order as well as other methods of entry, such as by cartographer or geographic name.