AMAZING map of the day. Track nearly every conceivable large cargo ship in the world. Just look at those sweet sweet oil tankers. Everything you need to know is right there: location, names of the ships, last port calls, length, itineraries, past tracks, speed. Oh man, I’m totally nerding out for the next hour! Peace out.
UPDATE: So sorry guys, I don’t know why these are distorted when you click them. If you know how to fix them, please let me know. Until then go to the map directly.
UPDATE II: Why this matters:
Imagine you ordered a book from Amazon.com, and it’s been two weeks. You’re like, yo, Amazon, where’s my book? And they track it for you. Now imagine you are the United States of America and you just bought $100 million in oil from Russia. You better believe that tanker is tracked!
Keeps tracks of delays. Every day lost can cost tens of thousands of dollars per ship.
Reroute ships around hurricanes, leaks, spills, migrating turtles, birds, hazards.
Refuel points.
Universities use this to calculate how much carbon and pollution is dumped into the environment. Ships don’t have mufflers on their exhausts like cars do, they’re very dirty.
15 (yes, fifteen) of the world’s largest ships pollute the equivalent of 760 MILLION cars (source). And there are over 90,000 ocean cargo ships.
Before Sim City or FarmVille, there was Jerry’s map. In the 1960s, Jerry Gretzinger began drawing a fantastical, growing map of unbelievable scope. It began with just a doodle, but now it takes up almost 2,000 8” x 10” frames.
His meticulous, iterative process intrigued documentary filmmaker Gregory Whitmore, who created this portrait of Gretzinger about two years ago. Very few people saw Mapping the Void, also known asJerry’s Map,until Vimeo’s Staff Picks blog discovered it this summer. Now the video has over 80,000 views, and dozens of comments from fans. Gretzinger posted his reaction on his blog in August, writing, “Wow! Thanks, Vimeo!”
This is the world’s most authoritative atlas. It’s published every four years. This edition is full of changes that the editors were forced to make because of climate change — shrinking lakes, changing coastlines, and whole new islands exposed by melting glaciers. Find out more.
Map of generic stream names in the United States (click for big). Each neon color corresponds to a locally used name. New England uses “brook” and “stream” - pretty boring. But much of New York uses “kill.” In the south west, the orange color, are Spanish terms rio, arroyo, and cañada.
These animations shows the motion of ice in Antarctica as measured by satellite data from the Canadian Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency and the European Space Agency, and processed by NASA-funded research from the University of California, Irvine. The background image from the Landsat satellite is progressively replaced by a map of ice velocity, which is color-coded on a logarithmic scale.
African Undersea Cables map. Three years ago, one man decided to map all the internet cables in Africa. He worked with cable companies who were competitively self-interested in developing the map. Then Google Africa stepped in to assist and a serious project was born. Most interesting the incredibly high cost of the cables, shown on the chart.
The recent oil leak in the Yellowstone River is bringing attention to the fact that U.S. oil pipelines are everywhere. While oil pipelines are an often under-reported portion of this nation’s energy and infrastructure debate, it’s not because there isn’t plenty to talk about.
Did you know that Benjamin Franklin named the Gulf Stream in 1786? He commissioned his cousin to draw this map, which Franklin published in the the journal, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. It’s a brilliant map by an amazing man. Read about it, here.
Radiation counter map of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. June 18, 2011
The red/orange/yellow is about the same sized area as Baltimore, MD, Washington, DC, Arlington, WV, and Richmond, VA. See below comparison of East Coast USA to Japan in land area. Fukushima, above, is just about aligned with where DC is below:
Note: You can read updates on the IAEA’s website, here.
Amazing digital reconstruction of the city of Washington, D.C., circa 1814, based on a combination of historical artwork and satellite images. The project is more an imprint of collective memory than an accurate, reliable historical representation.
A blog about the interactions between the built environment, people, and nature.
I'm a Washington, DC-based climate adaptation specialist. I help governments and stakeholders around the world increase their capacity to deal with climate impacts.
In addition to traveling and hiking, I research, publish, and lecture on how cities can adapt to climate change.
"Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt." - John Updike
