Examples of Environmental Maps = Exemples de cartes de l’environnement

Summary

Published in 1980 by the Joint Working Group on Environmental Atlases of the International Geographical Union and the International Cartographic Association, this volume examines representative methods for mapping environmental phenomena. It seeks to strengthen collaboration between geographers, who define subjects and interpret spatial distributions, and cartographers, who select, generalize, and translate data into graphic form. Rather than prescribing universal standards, the collection presents case studies as practical examples whose methods may be adopted, improved, or deliberately replaced. The introduction defines environment as the geographical circumstances that preserve, improve, or degrade human ecological systems, while warning against reducing environmental cartography to pollution, disaster, and impact assessment alone. A comprehensive approach must also address the structure and functioning of physical environments, temporal change, human influences, and potentially social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. This breadth creates major problems of scope, data volume, scale, generalization, visualization, updating, and comparability, making computer processing increasingly important. The case studies illustrate diverse subjects, geographical settings, data sources, and representational strategies. They include a computer-generated chromium map from the Regional Geochemical Atlas of Shetland; a map of environmental synanthropization in Poland; an assessment of environmental conditions in the Halle–Leipzig region; mapping of suspended-sediment concentrations in Canadian rivers; Hungarian water-quality maps; grid-based representation by the French National Forest Inventory; a terrain-type map for a comparative Chile–California Mediterranean scrub atlas; and a map of fog and cloud in Portugal. Together, these examples show how field sampling, monitoring networks, inventories, classifications, statistical grids, topographic interpretation, and automated cartography can convert specialized observations into regional environmental knowledge. They also demonstrate that mapping choices must reflect the character, precision, and spatial density of the source data. The Portuguese fog-and-cloud study particularly reveals the limitations of environmental mapping. Meteorological observations provide useful qualitative information on annual and daily rhythms, but uneven station coverage, uncertain station locations, observer subjectivity, and the highly local and transient nature of fog impede reliable national quantitative comparison. The map therefore emphasizes local contrasts relevant to planning rather than uniform numerical values. Its interpolation combines trustworthy records, local investigations, direct field knowledge, consultation with experienced residents, and topographic controls. Relief is simplified into major landforms and four elevation classes so that it supports rather than obscures the climatic theme. The map remains provisional, but satellite imagery, systematic remote sensing, and interviews with farmers, shepherds, fishers, drivers, and other knowledgeable observers offer routes for improvement. Overall, the volume presents environmental atlases as evolving analytical systems that require critical awareness of uncertainty, purposeful generalization, continual data revision, interdisciplinary cooperation, and an increasingly close relationship between cartography and computation.