Abstract
Abstract. Modern planetary maps are designed either as stand-alone products or as part of a map series and are commonly distributed in the Portable Document Format (pdf). With the advent of web-based map technology and its standardization, experimental steps towards digital-only and dynamic map display for planetary cartography have been made. Commonly, maps design and concepts were limited to the arrangement (stacking) of various data layers while any deeper cartographic concepts or questions about usability seemed to be of secondary importance. We here present a new cartographic approach of creating a web basemap for Mars by refining and integrating commonly available data and by building on a cartographic concept. The underlying concepts we elaborated upon are, however, valid for any other planetary body and are applicable in the same or at least very similar way to any other solar system body. With this approach we want to demonstrate that for the creation of web maps in the planetary sciences the cartographic process does not stop at the collection and literal stacking of data, but that dynamic planetary maps can have a considerably higher communication value through concepts and design. As much as web maps are dynamic, so are concepts and new developments, and we tried to implement a web basemap reflecting the common understanding and picture that laymen as well as professionals might have about Mars.
Highlights
Planetary exploration looks back on a long history
One might wonder what image of a planetary body does this exploration effort leave in the human mind and how is that image reflected in a map? If people draw a mental map of the Earth, its dominant character is probably represented by a dichotomy between land and water surfaces, focusing on coastlines and colors
Maps created today fall into one of three categories: 1. general purpose reference maps at small to relative large scale spanning at least several degrees of latitude and longitude and which represent surface albedo, topography and relief or the geology and physiography, commonly published as map sheets or maps published as part of the US Geological Survey (USGS) Scientific Map Investigation Series (Tanaka et al 2014); 2. topical maps at larger scale accompanying research contributions published in conventional journals; 3. dynamic digital maps published on online platforms using web and geospatial data services, e.g., USGS Mars Global Geographic Information System (GIS) Mapping Application, (USGS, 2018a)
Summary
Planetary exploration looks back on a long history. It started with the world's oldest known depiction of astronomical phenomena (LDA-LSA, 2018) at least 4000 years ago and did not advance significantly until the early 1600s due to the natural limitation of observations performed by the unaided eye. Visualization and communication of such information are achieved by cartographic products and hundreds of planetary maps have been crafted over the last 50 years. After all this time, one might wonder what image of a planetary body does this exploration effort leave in the human mind and how is that image reflected in a map? How can we generate a basemap for planetary bodies that transports an unique image of the surface characteristics in our mind, comparable to Earth maps?. Maps of planetary bodies have been created systematically as soon as first telescopes became available in the early 17th century. Efforts are made to digitize some of the older analog maps and to transfer them to the digital domain (Hargitai et al, 2006)
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