The most accurate world map available as a free download

Finally, our tax dollars going to something cool.

The folks at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with NASA and the Japanese government, have come together to make the world’s most accurate topo map. And it’s available for free!

The ASTER project, which stands for Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (say that ten times fast) is a minutely detailed look at the Earth using an instrument aboard Terra, a satellite that’s part of the Earth Observing System, EOS for short. It examines the differences in elevation, heat, and reflectivity on the Earth’s surface in order to study everything from forest cover to ice floes. This helps scientists understand and predict changes in the hugely complex system that is our little ball of clay.

One byproduct is the topo map, along with an amazing gallery of images of our world from above. These can be seen on their website.

You can download the maps for free from NASA’s EOS Digital Archive, where you’ll see a list of several ASTER products. Some cost, but some are free, such as the elevation model shown here.

National Geographic launches Topo.com

I kind of have a thing for maps — when I was a kid I either wanted to be a cartographer or a pickle factory (proper) — so I perked up when I heard that the National Geographic Society had just launched Topo.com, a comprehensive database and guide for topographic maps in the United States.

Inside, users are free to browse around an interactive Google map onto which the NGS’s topo database has been integrated. One can browse around updates trail and wilderness maps and ultimately customize a personal map to be printed and shipped to you.

The best part is that users can add their own video, pictures and trip reports to the site, making it incredibly easier to research a trip.

User content is still a bit low on the site, but take the opportunity to tool around your local area and see how the topography of the land around you changes. It’s really interesting to see your neighborhood not from the perspective from the roads, proper, but rather from the perspective of elevation and boundaries.

A view from the air: A book that tells what you’re seeing while you’re flying

Years ago I flew with a group of high school students from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Los Angeles for a seven hour field trip to Disneyland. None of the students had flown before. Math, geography and reading were tied into the trip’s purpose. For geography we studied maps of the three states we would fly over and I pointed out the landmarks we would see, and how to tell a city’s size by the colored space it takes up on the map. (These were special ed students)

As we flew, the students followed the land’s patterns looking for significant landmarks. On this particular flight, the pilot was chatty, pointing out details along the way so that helped. Flying in and out of Albuquerque, Phoenix and Los Angeles was a way to see in 3-D what the maps showed. As lesson plans went, this one was a winner.

There’s a book, America From the Air: A Guide to the Landscape Along Your Route that would have been a perfect companion for this jaunt. The book, co-authored by Daniel Mathews and James. S. Jackson, takes a close look at 14 flight patterns across the United States. The book is designed so you can follow your travels as you look out the window of an airplane. Landmarks, topography and specific details of the locations that one passes are featured. Plus, there’s a CD-ROM that goes with it.

The book sounds terrific to me, particularly since it also explains the relationship between the land and the people who inhabit it. Why this location? Why these crops here? There is a mixed bag of reviews, however, at Amazon.com. Folks who expected a coffee table book where the photographs carry the ride were somewhat disappointed. People who liked the analysis of the relationship between topography, land, its uses and human culture were impressed. I think what a great idea. [via Columbus Dispatch]