The Seattle Times on Saturday, June 2, published an article by staff reporter Erik Lacitis about a “secret, massive program that produced a million maps of cities and places around the world.” The mapping program is fascinating both from a cartographic perspective and a local perspective since Seattle and its environs are among the parts of the United States that were mapped.
King County’s marine research vessel, the SoundGuardian, spends much of its time on Puget Sound monitoring water quality, collecting samples to check on marine health, and maintaining marine buoys. Recently though, it went on its latest mission as part of a multi-year project to survey the King County saltwater shorelines and I was aboard.
Frequent users of King County iMap, the online app that provides scores of the most popular King County GIS data layers in a flexible, multi-feature, interactive map viewer, now have access to 2017 aerial orthophoto imagery as a basemap.
As a founding member of the Puget Sound QGIS User Group (PSQGIS), I am often asked why one would want to use QGIS in place of the ubiquitous6 Esri GIS software. I have two responses to this question, the first based on the ideology of software freedom and the second based on value for the dollar.
Sixty-five miles north of the King County GIS Center there is another highly effective county-based GIS operation. Skagit County Geographic Information Services (SCGIS), located in beautiful Mount Vernon, was recently featured in the March/April issue of Insight magazine, a publication of Professional & Technical Employees Local 17. The article looks into the history and growth of SCGIS and the current makeup of its ten-member team.
One of the most satisfying things that a well-made map can do is convey a sense of place. And an especially well-map map may convey a sense of a past place that both infuses and transcends a present location. I came across such a map yesterday just a few blocks from our own King County GIS Center location, where Seattle’s Pioneer Square transitions to the International District, specifically the historic Japantown.
Are you planning to attend the 26th annual GIS in Action Conference at Portland State University, April 23-24? If so, stop in and visit the King County GIS Center booth in the exhibitor hall where you can learn about the range of free resources that King County GIS has available, as well as our GIS consulting services and GIS training program.
Gerrymandering, the process of manipulating political district boundaries for some advantage, is a broadly recognized but poorly understood process. This topic was first discussed here in GIS & You by Dennis Higgins in a September 2017 article. Now, Mark Salling, Ph.D., GISP, Senior Fellow and Research Associate at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University, has written an informative article for the GIS Professional, the bimonthly newsletter of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association.
Monica Van der Vieren, who works as a King County Wastewater Treatment Division community relations planner, has created a new visually stunning Story Map, “On the Trail of the North American Buffalo” which tells the story of the North American buffalo and promotes bison and prairie conservation.
On International Women’s Day 2018, here are some thoughts…
