Cartography

Abstract

Cartography is ‘the discipline dealing with the conception, production, dissemination and study of maps’ (International Cartographic Association, 1995). As a discipline, cartography is most commonly found in geography departments in North America but is often a separate discipline in other areas of the world. It is one of several mapping sciences. The term ‘research’ in the discipline may refer to the gathering of information from which a map is compiled or the systematic discovery of new information about maps. Responding to changing social, intellectual, and technological innovations, cartography has risen from its roots in gestures and marks on the ground to a highly sophisticated and varied endeavor that uses data from aerial photographs, satellite images, and global positioning systems as well as other sources. Major concepts in cartography include scale, projection, spatial relationship, generalization, and symbolization and data modeling. Maps may be of the general reference type (showing a variety of individual features) or thematic (showing a distribution) or somewhere between these ends of the spectrum.