Map Reading and Interpretation
Jim Hathaway
Slippery Rock University

G&ES 115 (1 credit)
Instructor: Jim Hathaway, member of Association of PA State College & University
Faculties (APSCUF). APSCUF is committed to promoting excellence in all that we do to ensure that our students receive the highest quality education
Office: 325 ATS (go through 319 ATS)
Office Hours: M: 2:00-2:45, T: 2:15-4:15; Th, 2:15-4:30; feel free to see me at other times
Phone: 724-738-2391 (leave a message if I'm not in)
Email: james dot hathaway at sru dot edu
When and Where:  
Section 01: January 28 – March 1, MWF 11:00-11:50, 309 ATS
Required Materials:
"Portersville Quadrangle" (USGS topographic map, also see "Topographic Map Symbols" on this webpage)
calculator (cell phone calculators are not allowed during exams)
flash drive or memory stick
Course Description:
Provides fundamental map concepts with application in web mapping services, topographic maps, and introductory geographic information systems

Your course grade will be based on the extent of your mastery of the outcomes listed below. I evaluate these outcomes in four assignments worth 50 points each and in two exams worth 400 points each for a course total of 1000 points. You are allowed to bring one page of notes to the two exams. Course grades are awarded as follows: 900-1000 = A, 800-899 = B, 700-799 = C, 600-699 = D, below 600 = F.

Attendance is important. Each class builds on the one before it, so if you miss one, it may be difficult to follow what is going on. Your attendance will affect your grade. Each unexcused absence in excess of 1 will result in a 20-point loss (e.g., a student with 3 unexcused absences will have 40 points deducted from his or her course total). If you are absent, you are responsible for getting the assignment from another student or me and for completing it by the due date. Students who are late to class should see me at the end of the period to ensure that they were not marked absent.

Academic Integrity:
The work that you submit must be your own, for both moral and legal reasons. In this course you may collaborate on assignments but you may not collaborate on exams. The academic integrity section of the undergraduate catalog goes into more detail about what academic dishonesty is and its consequences SRU’s Academic Policies and Procedures.

Student Learning Outcomes:
Map Reading and Interpretation is taught in the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment (GGE). Among the outcomes that GGE students will achieve upon graduation are

1. each graduate shall develop skills in quantitative, qualitative, technological, laboratory, and field procedures, and 
2. each graduate shall develop general knowledge and understanding of the concepts of location, place, human environment interactions, movement, and region.

Among the evidence that a student displays for attainment of number 1 above is 
each graduate will learn to read, construct, and comprehend thematic maps and derive perspective output from a map

and for the attainment of number 2 above is 
each graduate will demonstrate an understanding of concepts such as absolute and relative location, proximity, separation, direction, region, hierarchy, density, and dispersion, and methods that are used to describe and analyze spatial patterns, and

each graduate will demonstrate an understanding of absolute location systems such as latitude-longitude and alpha-numeric grids

As the first course in the department’s geospatial techniques course sequence, Map Reading and Interpretation introduces students to the knowledge and skills required to meet departmental outcomes. By the end of this course, the student will

• acquire map skills involving distance, area, scale, latitude/longitude, and time zones
• acquire skills in creating and interpreting maps with web mapping services
• describe the purposes and distinguishing characteristics of selected map projections
• identify and make at least six types of thematic maps and know appropriate uses for each
• acquire competence using paper and electronic topographic maps; including concepts such as elevation, direction, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates, slope, and profiles; as well as competence in generating and interpreting electronic topographic maps
• acquire introductory geographic information science concepts

1. Coordinate systems: the graticule—parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.
   1. About.com has a helpful site on latitude and longitude, and here's another site. You can obtain the latitude and longitude for domestic and foreign names at the US Board on Geographic Names or the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.  Robogeo has a point and click source for latitude and longitude
   2. antipodes: this site takes a point on the globe and provises the point that is diametrically opposed to it. Also see Wikipedia's article
2. Map information: types and purposes of maps, map elements, map symbols
3. To find the distance from place or one set of coordinates to another, use MapPoint (Menu Bar/Tools/Location Sensor), Daft Logic's Google Maps Distance Calculator, Zonum Solutions' MapTool, this CSGNetwork.com webpage, or this Chemical Ecology web page
4. Time zones: calculating the time in any part of the world with a time zone map (e.g., I Google Maps  or travel.com (here's a time zone converter, make sure to remove the check from the "Use Current Date/Time" box; and here's a map of the Earth showing the day and night regions at this moment--for more information see the Earth and Moon Viewer web page)
   
5. Scale: units of measurement, map distance and ground distance, representative fraction scale, verbal scale, bar scale, scale conversions
   1. Scale is well illustrated with this Powers of 10 tutorial the Scale of the Universe 2

Tools of Representation: Making and Interpreting Computer Maps 

6. Location maps

7. Aerial image: Bing, Yahoo, MapQuest, or Google Maps.  For one- or two-foot resolution maps of most Pennsylvania counties, go to the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access site's Imagery Viewer and Download Tool and click on PAMAP (2003-2006) in the upper right hand corner
8. Point symbol/line/isoline/bounded area maps: Critter Quest PA, nationalatlas.gov
9. Thematic maps: Microsoft MapPoint, ArcGIS Explorer Online (including ESRI Tapestry, see reference guide)

Communicating Spatial Ideas, Continued

10. Map projections, from sphere to plane: types of global transformation;  planar, cylindrical, conic, and miscellaneous projections; projection properties, choice of projections Wikipedia has a helpful article on map projection, also see the USGS webpage on projections or the user friendly radical cartography site. For two interactive sites that use Tissot's Indicatrices to show distortion in projections, see here or here.  
11. Mapping a single topic or theme: types of thematic maps (Wikipedia has a useful article on thematic maps)

Maps and Change: Spatio-Temporal Thinking (dynamic: motion, flow, force, interaction)

12. How spatial features change through time: changes in condition over time, position of something over time, extent of something over time; e.g., Land Use/Land Cover Change
    1. Google Earth, which has a historical imagery button at the top of the window
    2. For historical air photos of Pennsylvania, see Penn Pilot

Displaying and Analyzing the Shape of the Land: Topographic Maps and Geographic Information Systems
download topo maps free!

13. Topographic maps: what they can tell us,  USGS symbols
14. Depicting the shape of the land: contour elevation. Here's a three-dimensional topographic map simulation
    1. Use Zonum Solutions' Maptool to point and click to get elevation
15.  Orientation and direction: true north, magnetic north, grid north; cardinal directions and azimuths
16. Coordinate systems: latitude and longitude, the UTM grid (fact sheet from USGS), Maptech's online map server provides UTM readings (select UTM in the Coordinates menu)
17. Exploring topographic maps and layers with GeoPDF, Google Earth, and the National Map
18. Slopes with Geo PDFs, profiles with Google Earth
19. Panoramas with HeyWhat'sThat
20. Analyzing change with Google Earth and the National Map: USGS Map Locator and Downloader, Google Earth with topographic map layers, the National Map Viewer, Acme Mapper, and the ArcGIS USA Topo Maps layer
    1. GIS glossary

Metric Lengths:
10 millimeters = 1 centimeter
100 centimeters = 1 meter
1000 meters = 1 kilometer