National Geographic Atlas 8th Edition

[Glynis Waughtal]

Theeighth edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World contains satellite views and maps of the earth's physical features—information encompassing cities, nations, and the physical and natural worlds—as well as political maps of all the countries on earth. It is also the only world atlas on the market with a fully integrated Internet component. The companion Web site to the atlas allows users to create custom views of maps, zoom into satellite globe imagery to detailed views of world landmarks, and download and print atlas updates.

The atlas is an update and expansion of the seventh edition. Updating a world atlas is a prodigious undertaking. Among other variables, countries change their boundaries, cities change their names, and highway construction changes the roads. To improve the update process, National Geographic has used digital techniques to produce the physical and political plates (i.e., two-page map spread) in the atlas since the seventh edition, when it first created the ArcInfo coverages that produced these plates.

In addition to making the more than 17,000 updates in the eighth edition, National Geographic decided to move from coverages to ArcGIS personal geodatabases for the physical and political plates. The decision to move to geodatabase format will keep National Geographic at the forefront of technology and enable it to make future updates using the most advanced techniques available.

To move from coverage to geodatabase format, National Geographic selected Esri's Professional Services Group and Esri's team member, Aerial Information Systems, Inc. (AIS). Kevin Allen, the director of Map Services at National Geographic, indicates that the selection of the Esri team was based on technical experience in creating both databases and geodatabases, past performance, and cost.

To keep the content and the appearance of the physical and political plates consistent, Esri, in cooperation with National Geographic, created a geodatabase model that accommodated the information in all the plates. David Watkins, the lead Esri cartographer, reports that the geodatabase design was necessarily created in an iterative fashion, since additional information was rolled into the geodatabase design as it was discovered. Ultimately, however, all the personal geodatabases conformed to the same database model.

To convey the updates that were necessary, National Geographic created a digital edit overlay for each plate by using Adobe Illustrator; each overlay highlighted the updates and the location of changes to features and text. In addition to converting the coverage data to personal geodatabases, Esri converted the Illustrator overlays to georeferenced TIFF files, then provided the geodatabases and the TIFF files to AIS, which edited the geodatabases with the latest version of the ArcMap application that is included in ArcGIS Desktop (ArcView, ArcEditor, ArcInfo). Primarily, ArcInfo was used for this project.

It was understood from the beginning that the ArcMap map documents would be converted into the Adobe Illustrator files with which National Geographic would publish the atlas. To streamline the ArcMap-to-Illustrator export procedure, layering in the map documents was predefined and symbology was customized to improve the work flow. For example, National Geographic provided its own Illustrator fill patterns, and the map document included these fill areas as solid fill symbols in a separate layer. This made it easy to replace the layer in the Illustrator file after the export. The same process was used for a custom color overlay and the dashed-line patterns.

After the conversion to Illustrator, National Geographic did some additional finishing, including some final text placement adjustments, adding titles, scale bars, and some of the other information associated with page layouts. Finally, Illustrator was used to create the color separations used by the printer.

Watkins says that the index, which constitutes about one-third of the atlas, represents another significant achievement. Each feature is identified in the index by name, type (e.g., river, mountain), location, page number, and reference coordinate. Although this might sound simple, implementing the entries successfully means complying with a multitude of indexing rules.

A feature that appears on several pages in the atlas, for example, is indexed only to the best page for that feature. Some features have multiple names; these features are indexed on both the preferred and secondary names. Some rivers run through several countries and have a different name in each country. These names are linked in the index by "see also" references. Watkins reports that generating the index was ultimately handled with the help of Esri's new PLTS software functionality that will be published in a future release of PLTS. The index, like the physical and political plates, was finished at National Geographic.

The Esri team completed its part of the work in less than a year (June 2003 to May 2004), and National Geographic spent several months doing the atlas finishing, given that it was solely responsible for the satellite imagery and the other plates Esri did not produce. "It's very important for people to realize that Esri did not produce this atlas," says Mary Rosenbaum, the Esri project manager. "Esri supported the work that went into part of it, but National Geographic deserves the credit for the atlas as a whole." The atlas was printed in Brazil and shipped back to the United States in time for Christmas. It has been such a big success in the marketplace that it is about to go into a second printing.

National Geographic wants to publish the next version of the atlas entirely with ArcGIS Desktop. "Publishing with ArcMap will simplify the process and speed it up," says Allen. "We're looking forward to the streamlined process that will be associated with the next edition."

The 27th edition of the Oxford Atlas of the World (Oxford University Press); this atlas is updated annually. This edition includes more satellite imagery, a new feature on plastics pollution, and an updated cities section. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

The 14th edition of the Times Concise Atlas of the World (Times Books). One step below the Comprehensive in the Times Atlas range, and a bit more than half the price. Available now in the U.K., next month in Canada, and next March in the United States. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop

A short piece in the Edinburgh Evening News last April noted the 100th anniversary of the death of John G. Bartholomew (1860-1920), the fourth of six generations of mapmaking Bartholomews; their firm, John Bartholomew and Son, was responsible for the Times atlases before they were taken up by HarperCollins.

Today marks the U.K. publication of two atlases in the Times atlas range: the eighth edition of the Times Reference Atlas of the World and the seventh edition of the Times Mini Atlas of the World.

How did Collins Geo allow this to happen? This is the question Mark Monmonier explores in a piece on the New Scientist website. Monmonier, the author of How to Lie with Maps and many other books, argues that hubris was behind the mistake: that the towering reputation of the Times Atlases led to overconfidence.

First published in 1963, the National Geographic Atlas of the World is now in its 10th Edition, published in 2014, and contains over 300 maps and nearly as many illustrations. The maps are beautiful and engaging and the overall design has become a hallmark of National Geographic publications.

One of the most notable design features involves colourfully marking the country boundaries yet keeping the interior of the geographic areas as black text on a white background (this extract from the 1992 6th Edition). This helps establish a clear figure-ground between mapped features and the labels and harks back to the use of hand painted tint bands on early historical maps.

The atlas is also notable for its use of the Winkel Tripel Projection, a standard since 1998, and for its custom proprietary fonts originally designed in the 1930s and named after staff cartographers of the era (Darley, Bumstead, Riddiford etc.). The fonts and extensive labeling alone sets the atlas apart from others and gives it an unmistakable style. Touches, such as the curved lettering from point features around a coastline, are also a signature National Geographic style.

Last week, President Obama unveiled the final draft of sweeping new rules to limit emissions from the nation's power plants. In his speech, he underlined the urgency of climate change by noting that National Geographic had redrawn its atlas due to melting ice.

In response, National Geographic released a GIF showing the changes they've made over the years to the Arctic in the National Geographic Atlas of the World. The 2014 edition contains "one of the most striking changes in the publication's history," according to National Geographic's news site. The atlas has been printed since 1963.

"You hear reports all the time in the media about this," National Geographic Geographer Juan Jos Valds said. "Until you have a hard-copy map in your hand, the message doesn't really hit home." He told National Geographic's news site that the ice has melted even further since the 2014 atlas was released.

"With the trend that we are seeing now it is very likely that there will be a day within this century that there will be no ice in the arctic," Josefino Comiso, a senior research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explains in a video about the atlas' changes.

Zo is a senior writer at Newsweek. She covers science, the environment, and human health. She has written for a number of other outlets including The New York Times, Guernica, The Nation, Maddowblog, Gothamist, Guernica, and Talking Points Memo.

8th Edition. 134pp. Elephant folio in original pictorial slipcase with attached ribbon bookmark. Colour pictorial boards with map endpapers. Profusely illustrated with colour maps and photos. Colour photo frontispiece. fine From National Geographic, the eighth edition of their comprehensive world atlas. Full of detailed satellite imagery and maps on world information ranging from political boundaries to tectonic plates and biodiversity. All continents are covered, with extra chapters on the world's oceans, cities, nations and space, the last of which contains maps of the moon and Mars. Seller Inventory # 137329

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