Hi there, I’m Zac McCormick, a software engineer here at Spatial Networks. We’re obsessed with beautiful maps, and I thought I’d share a mapping experiment I did with openly available data, map projections, and TileMill. Traditional web mapping depicts Antarctica as a massive landmass at the bottom of the Earth that appears larger than just about every other continent — completely distorted in traditional Mercator projections. I thought it would be a fun experiement to try and make a slippy map of Antarctica with accurate proportions.
The map is based on data from the SCAR Antarctic Digital Database, NGDC ETOPO1 Global Relief, and the USGS Geographic Names database. I manipulated the data with QGIS, PostGIS, and a few GDAL/OGR scripts. The cartography was done in TileMill, an awesome map design studio from our friends at MapBox.
Creating the Map
A screenshot of the label data in QGIS
The data is projected into EPSG 3031 and rendered as if it were EPSG 3857 (Web Mercator) in TileMill. While creating this map I thought I would also experiement with custom labeling techniques, like the curved ones used to label the oceans, seas, and major areas of the continent. AJ Ashton showed this technique earlier this year and I thought I would try it in this map. To the right is a screenshot of QGIS showing the line data I created to get the custom curved labels.
I didn’t have enough room to label all of the major areas, but I selected some based on a few other static maps of Antarctica I saw out on the web. I was pretty happy with the end result, and I think we will use this technique in some of our other maps.
For more information about Spatial Networks maps or technology, ping me or @spatialnetworks on Twitter. Comments are also welcome here on the blog.
