Portal:Maps
Main page | Maps |
The Maps and Cartography Portal
A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes.
Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, while others are dynamic or interactive. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or fictional, without regard to context or scale, such as in brain mapping, DNA mapping, or computer network topology mapping. The space being mapped may be two dimensional, such as the surface of the Earth, three dimensional, such as the interior of the Earth, or even more abstract spaces of any dimension, such as arise in modeling phenomena having many independent variables.
Although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word "map" comes from the medieval Latin: Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant 'napkin' or 'cloth' and mundi 'the world'. Thus, "map" became a shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. (Full article...)
Cartography (/kɑːrˈtɒɡrəfi/; from Ancient Greek: χάρτης chartēs, 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and γράφειν graphein, 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively. (Full article...)
Selected article -
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Fig_4.4.svg/220px-Fig_4.4.svg.png)
A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.
The uncounted plural, geographic information systems, also abbreviated GIS, is the most common term for the industry and profession concerned with these systems. It is roughly synonymous with geoinformatics. The academic discipline that studies these systems and their underlying geographic principles, may also be abbreviated as GIS, but the unambiguous GIScience is more common. GIScience is often considered a subdiscipline of geography within the branch of technical geography. (Full article...)General images -
Selected quote
“ | The president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map. | ” |
— Shimon Peres |
Related portals
Related WikiProjects
Selected biography -
Hipparchus (/hɪˈpɑːrkəs/; Greek: Ἵππαρχος, Hipparkhos; c. 190 – c. 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry, but is most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia, and probably died on the island of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working astronomer between 162 and 127 BC.
Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. For this he certainly made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians and by Meton of Athens (fifth century BC), Timocharis, Aristyllus, Aristarchus of Samos, and Eratosthenes, among others. (Full article...)Selected picture
![Oceans map](https://cdn.statically.io/img/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Oceans.png/500px-Oceans.png)
Did you know
- ... that the 100 gecs tree was listed as a "place of worship" on Google Maps?
- ... that DeepStateMap.Live, an interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, received up to 120,000 visitors in 30 minutes during the Battle of Izium in the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive?
- ... that the actress Lottie Williams was one of the cakewalk dancers depicted on the front cover of the sheet music for Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag"?
- ... that in 2007, Arthur Gray's £2 Kangaroo and Map stamp sold for a world record price for a single Australian stamp?
- ... that the Canadian League for Peace and Democracy organized a 10,000-person rally at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto to protest a 2,500-person fascist rally?
- ... that actress Agnes Mapes had to improvise a complex choreographed dance from basic poses for the 1907 play The Holy City?
Topics
Map - Atlas - Geography - Topography
Cartography: Cartographers - History of cartography - Ancient world maps - World maps - Compass rose - Generalization - Geographic coordinate system - Geovisualization - Relief depiction - Scale - Terra incognita - Planetary cartography
Map projection: Azimuthal equidistant - "Butterfly" - Dymaxion - Gall–Peters - General Perspective - Goode homolosine - Mercator - Mollweide - Orthographic - Peirce quincuncial - Robinson - Sinusoidal - Stereographic
Maps: Animated mapping - Cartogram - Choropleth map - Estate map - Geologic map - Linguistic map - Nautical chart - Pictorial map - Reversed map - Road atlas - Thematic map - Topographic map - Weather map - Web mapping - World map
Map examples
Geographic
![Biogeography regions of Europe](https://cdn.statically.io/img/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Europe_biogeography_countries_en.svg/300px-Europe_biogeography_countries_en.svg.png)
Political
![The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia](https://cdn.statically.io/img/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Cilician_Armenia-en.svg/300px-Cilician_Armenia-en.svg.png)
Nautical
Categories
Things you can do
Here are some Geography related tasks you can do:
|
Atlases and maps of the world at Wikimedia Commons
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus