Lab 3 Neogeography

View Along the Yangzi River in a larger map

According to archaeological accounts, the Yangtze River/Changjiang already existed when China started its civilization more than 5000 years ago. Despite its importance, a lot of people tended to focus on looking at the Yellow River, which is North of the Yangtze, because most of the really important cultural artifacts and archaeological sites which suggest the power of China were found along it. However, nowadays, the focus is more and more given to the Yangtze river because of the increasing amount of development along it and people's realization of its importance to the Chinese civilization. As a Chinese archaeologist, I believe it is important for me to increase people's attention to the river because of the increasing finds and developments along it and the huge amount of resources it provides to the livelihood of the Chinese. Therefore I have created this map "Along the Yangtze River" linking the four rivers (Tuotuo River, Tongtian River, Jinsha River and Changjiang) which combined into the Yangtze River, as indicated by the blue line. On the other hand, the red line shown on the map depicts a route linking important archaeological sites and modern developments in the major cities (Shanghai, Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, SiChuan, Yunan, and Qinghai) that the Yangtze River flows through. By plotting these points on the map, we can see that the Yangtze River is important in both past and present, and since not a lot of people know the actual flow of the Yangtze, therefore this map allows viewers to visualize how the river flows from West to East.

Neogeography allows both amateurs and experts to easily create a map that they desire without the need to handle complicated technological resources. For example, my map was easy to create simply by searching for the specific places that I typed in on googlemaps and also by tracing the different rivers and connect them with a line because of the pre-existing information provided. On the other hand, it allows viewers to easily visualize and understand what I tended to present, that is, the river itself and also the locations of the archaeological sites and the modern developments. And it does not require additional specialized knowledge about geography or cartography to understand what I presented. Moreover, users can be able to post pictures or videos thus merging both cartographical and real world representations so to create an easy-to-read and resourceful map to convey their main purpose and increase the significance of the issue portrayed.

Nevertheless, after plotting this map, I realize that neogeography has its own pitfalls too. First of all, the data being added and stored cannot be too large. For example, when I tried to plot blue line from Shanghai to Qinghai precisely by zooming in and plotting in the actual curve of the meander, it was not possible for googlemaps to save and therefore I have to plot it with separate straight lines. Second, the resolution of the locations when zoomed in might be low and therefore could not allow us to precisely look at the actual features on the ground. Third, the points that users intend to plot might sometimes be inaccurate because the maps might not contain all of the geographic information either due to the fact that it is not updated or that the place was too insignificant to be recorded in the first place. And the information that the neogeographer provides might be too subjective and might therefore mislead the viewer.

Sources:

Yangtze River source: http://img8.itiexue.net/1092/10926752.jpg

Qingzang Railway:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrXguB8o8bk

Lijiang Ancient City:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiK0rw-E0eE&feature=related

San Xing Dui Archaeological remains:http://lh5.ggpht.com/_N6v9j1PlOvc/SchOz3bhQeI/AAAAAAAABJQ/db-o-PwiFFA/s800/20090306-15天津-三星堆-成都.jpg

Three Gorges Dam, Yichang, China:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9CJQLyufJ6LzlGvWs_jW_mKPROxJO2_9DRQX60GegKSXo4jn1BRVYEaHVwvP32Q3cuQSoEeXGHUVm3lqAuDB4EHKtzETQFKAnuE48-w3Se0iWtjMTMR0D7PAmH4asqck4LWCgHrpsBLE/s320/三峽大壩1.jpg

Changsha Hunan Museum:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcYthkmUYCc

Eastern Zhou Dynasty tomb:http://culture.people.com.cn/GB/22219/6779297.html

Xiangshujian Pumping Water and Storing energy power station:http://ido.thethirdmedia.com/article/frame.aspx?turl=http%3a//ido.3mt.com.cn/article/200803/show928543c33p1.ibod&rurl=&title=%u5B89%u5FBD%u8003%u53E4%u53D1%u6398%u51FA%u516D%u5343%u5C81%u9057%u5740_%u5B89%u5FBD%u5C06%u5DE2%u6E56%u6253%u9020%u6210%u4E3A%u5168%u56FD%u8457%u540D%u7684%u65C5%u6E38%u5EA6%u5047%u80DC%u5730%20---%20ido.3mt.com.cn

Words more than a thousand years older than Oracle Bone inscriptions:http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2003-10-24/1719985504s.shtml

Gyangfulin Culture Archaeological site:http://news.163.com/08/0626/21/4FD42DA9000120GU.html

Yangtze River Mouth:http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2006-09/28/xinsrc_13209032822070151670374.jpg

Lab 2: USGS Topographic maps

1. What is the name of the quadrangle?

Beverly Hills

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?

Conoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood, Pacific Ocean

3. When was the quadrangle first created?

1966

4. What datum was used to create your map?

North American Datum of 1927, North American Datum of 1983

5. What is the scale of the map?

1:24,000

6a. 5 centimeers on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?

Based on the scale of the map, 1:24,000
1cm (on map) = 24,000cm (on ground)
5cm (on map) = 24,000X5 = 120000cm (on ground)
As 1m = 100 cm
Therefore 5 cm on the ground is equivalent to 1,200m on the ground.

6b. 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?

Based on the scale of the map, 1:24,000
1 inch (on map) = 24,000 inches (on ground)
5 inches (on map) = 120000inches (on ground)
As 1 mile = 63360 inches
Therefore 5 inches on the map is equivalent to 120000/63360= 1.894 miles on the ground (rounded off to the nearest thousandths).

6c. One mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?

Based on the scale of the map, 1:24,000
1 mile (on map) = 24,000 miles (on ground)
1/24,000 mile (on map) = 1 mile (on ground)
As 1 mile = 63360 inches
Therefore 1 mile on ground is equivalent to 63360/24000 = 2.64 inches on map.

6d. Three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?

Based on the scale of the map, 1:24,000
1 km (on map) = 24,000 km (on ground)
1/24,000 km (on map) = 1 km (on ground)
3 km (on ground) = 3 X 1/24,000 = 1/8000 km (on map)
As 1km=100000cm
Therefore 3 km on ground is equivalent to 100000/8000=12.5 cm on map.

7. What is the contour interval on your map?

20 Feet

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of:
a) the Public Affairs Building

34°4'30"N, 118°26'00"W
34.075°N, 118.43°W

b) the tip of Santa Monica Pier

34°0'27"N, 118°30'00"W
34.0075°N, 118.5°W

c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir

34°7'12"N, 118°24'24"W
34.12°N, 118.41°W

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park)

580 feet
176.784 meters

b) Woodlawn Cemetery

140 feet
42.672 meters

c) Crestwood Hills Park

700 feet
213.36 meters

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?

Zone 11

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?

(3763 N)or 3763 X 1000 meters = 3,763,000N and (362 E) or 362 X 10,000 meters = 362,000E

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?

(363,000 - 362,000) X (3,764,000 - 3,763,000) = 1,000,000 meters square

13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 3771000, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measurements in Excel (hint: create a line chart). Figure out how to lavel the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as a graphic in your blog.

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?

14°

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?

From North to South

16. Crop out UCLA from the map and include it as a graphic on your blog.

Lab Assignment 1

This is an ancient map drawn during the Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE) taken fromhttp://bbs.godeyes.cn/showtopic-33672.aspx. Although the conditions of this map are poor, we can still see the distinctive features shown including specific places and the landscape features surrounding them. This map is one of the earliest maps found in China and it was drawn on silk. According to experts, this was used as a military map and we can see that the coverage of the landscape is quite broad, suggesting that people, more than two thousand years ago had the ability to make sense of their environment to locate places and navigate in a large space. As we can see, there are boxes-like, circular-like, and curve-like features on the map. The boxes might represent bounded areas like cities with city walls. The circular features might be other military bases, and the wave like features might be mountain ranges. There is no evidence showing that it is a scaled map, but the relative locations of places with nominal markers in addition to the cardinal directions can allow the readers of the map to navigate through different features on earth's surface. This map interests me a lot because of the abilities of the people to create such complex maps within a large space without ariel photographic or detective technologies. It is also interesting to note that the reason for making such map was for a military purpose. When the people were really engaged in a war with other states at that time, the leader, leading such a huge group of soldiers through such intricate landscape, must really be able to comprehend what was going on in the 2D space and relate it to the 3D space around. In addition to this, it was really important for the person who drew the map to be really accurate.

This map is a map of Hong Kong, China taken from http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/Map_of_Hong_Kong.svg/400px-Map_of_Hong_Kong.svg.png. Hong Kong is divided into 3 main regions - due to historical jurisdiction (Hong Kong as a British colony) and governmental control reasons - namely The New Territories, Kowloon, and Hong Kong Island and is further subdivided 18 districts (as shown on the map) for better control of the people living in the areas by each of the district governors. As we can see from the map, the New Territories districts are clustered in the Northern area of the whole of Hong Kong, Kowloon districts in the middle, and Hong Kong Island districts further South. And all these 18 regions are separated on the maps by gray borderlines to show their distinctive areas. Having lived in Hong Kong for all my life, I have never really seen the clear border marked on any landmarks or features to separate the different districts for example 5. Sha Tin and 6. Tai Po, all they have is a small sign saying "Welcome to Tai Po" when going from the Sha Tin direction to the Tai Po direction or "Welcome to Sha Tin" when going from Tai Po to Sha Tin, but these signs are separated a long distance apart from each other and it is really hard to tell when standing in between those signs which district you are in. It is only through this map or even more detailed ones showing where exactly the border is to determine where we are in Hong Kong. However, all these are determined and controlled by the government and also the department in control of all the aerial information of Hong Kong and it might be marked with slight distinctions on different maps. For me, I live in Sha Tin near the border of Tai Po, therefore I have no problem in answering census or any governmental documents asking which district I live in. But people living "between the signs" or "right on the border" of two different districts, it might be up to the government to decide which district they belong to.

This map showing the whole Beijing railway system is take from http://www.beijingholidays.net/image/image_bj/beijing-subway.jpg. As discussed in class, this is a kind of network map showing a topological space of a certain location - Beijing. It shows how different stations are connected to each other not by showing the absolute locations but the nominal and relative locations. The lines connect all the Beijing railway stations into an intricate but easy to read map which could easily allow people to get a sense of the space they are in and how to get from one station to another easily through the connections. This summer, I was traveling in Beijing with one of my other friend (who has also, like me, never been to Beijing). Each morning, we started off at Wangjingxi, a station on a orange "13" line. And in order to visit different landmarks including the Forbidden city and the Olympic village, we had to ask our friend who instructed us to get off at certain stations. For example, one time he told us to go to Fuxingmen on the red "1" line (from Wangjingxi) and it was really easy to get there simply by following the network lines to take the correct train. And then we realized that we had two options either going to the Dongzhimen direction or the Xizhimen direction because either way would take us there to Fuxingmen. This shows that how maps can allow us to make choices (route choices) just like what we do with a scaled map with our survey knowledge using shortcuts. This map, as compared to a more complex scaled map of Beijing, is much easier if we refer to the different railway stations as benchmarks. But at the same time it is also confusing because it does not have the cardinal directions and when we were traveling in the railway station, the signs would sometimes tell us to go to West or East direction.