I
wanted to make a map that was important to the seasonal relationships between
drought, wildfire, and smoke- fitting for a summer class. Our area has had a new “smoke season” in
recent years, and I wanted to show the current situation related to that on a
national level, as these variables can impact places far away from their origin. But doing all three would have been a tall
task, so I settled on simpler information that can be found by drought and
wildfire data alone.
There was a lot I changed from the
initial draft. Most importantly, it was
the message of the map, which I found lacking.
Originally the message was to show where wildfires were likelier to
spread due to drought conditions. I felt
this could be intuitively gathered by asking a different question: has drought
increased the spread? This I placed in
the title, helping to clarify the message.
Other things I changed were the
color scheme, which a colleague felt was difficult to interpret. I changed the drought conditions to a gray
scale for the wildfires to stand out more.
Then I added a subtitle and a note to help explain what the data was
showing. The lecture and lab this week
helped me to tweak the placement and alignment of my elements, and to balance
the map. My north arrow is smaller and
less elaborate. I fixed the presentation
of my legend for wildfires. A coordinate
system was also added.
I didn’t add a background as
someone suggested, because I thought that might distract from the map’s focus. I prefer to keep things simple in an academic
setting, where the goal is to read and interpret information, not focus on
aesthetics. Though with more practice,
aesthetics could come into play more as my skills are refined. Nonetheless, I find this is an elegantly
simple map to look at, and I am proud of my work, even if there are
shortcomings.
With more time and better data, I
would have tried making the map more aesthetic by adding the background. Rather than smoke, additional data would have
been forest cover, to help illustrate why the Great Plains have less wildfires
despite having more drought. This would
have rendered the note unnecessary and made the map more complete. Areas where drought and forest overlap would
have had a special mixed symbology.
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