Watercolor painting with two aerial views of Mount St. Helens. At upper right, the pre-1980 snowcapped cone rises above green, forested ridges and a blue Spirit Lake. Filling most of the image, the post-eruption scene shows a low, blasted crater, brown landslide hummocks, and a dark, debris-filled lake. Dee Molenaar / U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

#MSH45 | Watercolors
One of the most powerful “before and afters” of Mount St. Helens isn’t a photo at all, it’s this watercolor.

Legendary PNW mountaineer Dee Molenaar painted the graceful pre-1980 cone and Spirit Lake basin alongside the torn-open crater and devastated landscape that followed.

Thanks! I used Quick Terrain Modeler for the 3D layer rendering. I didn’t warp the terrain at all.

Thank you Daniel—I appreciate it!

Map of Dry Falls in Washington State's Channeled Scablands

Detailed view of Dry Falls map from Washington State's Channeled Scablands

New, super-detailed Dry Falls interpretive map from the Washington Geological Survey. #iceagefloods #missoulafloods #channeledscablands #geomorphology washingtonstategeology.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/n...

Daniel Coe & Joel Gombiner - Washington Geological Survey YouTube video by Nick Zentner

@joelgombiner.bsky.social and I had a conversation with Nick Zentner yesterday about our upcoming WGS #DryFalls map. Looking for feedback before publishing. #iceagefloods #missoulafloods #geomorphology youtu.be/v01cycrCgno

Agricultural land with many long narrow fields shaded various colors from green to yellow, indicating the normalized difference vegetation index of vegetation greenness. Fields are oriented north-south parallel to drumlins and ice sheet flow direction.

Agricultural land with many long narrow fields shaded various colors from green to yellow, indicating the normalized difference vegetation index of vegetation greenness. Fields are oriented northeast-southwest parallel to drumlins and ice sheet flow direction.

Drumlinized land use, shaded by NDVI. Fields with various degrees of vegetation greenness, oriented parallel to drumlin long axes reflecting two different ice flow directions across the Green Bay Lobe, southern Wisconsin.

The Public Domain Image Archive The Public Domain Review (a true gem of the web) has launched The Public Domain Image Archive, “a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse”. While Th

The Public Domain Image Archive is a newly launched “curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse”. Careful, you could lose some hours in here… [kottke.org]

The colors are a DTM blended with an REM. The scarp looks amazing with just the DTM colors applied but the REM brought out the river details as well.

Lidar-derived color elevation image of the Castle Mountain Fault scarp cutting across the Little Sustina River.

Castle Mountain Fault scarp cutting across the Little Susitna River about 50km north of Anchorage, #Alaska. #lidar #geomorphology #faultscarp

Just a regular reminder: the ArcticDEM is one of the most beautiful spatial datasets out there. I've been working on a large tile set for our #arctic abrupt thaw mapping activities recently and I can't help but stop and take a peek as the data rolls in.

A collage of maps that Christina made in 2024. Topics include permafrost, boreal forests, wildfire, peatlands, and drought.

A few of the maps and graphics I made in 2024. What climate maps do you want to see next year?

Sometimes trivia is just that: trivial. Some other times, though, it cracks the world open a bit, into something a little less disenchanted. Such is this trinket about my local stretch of the Mississippi River as it bends its way through St. Paul, and the giant from which it emerged.

As you might notice upon visiting the Twin Cities, the Mississippi’s valley can be rather narrow or strangely wide, depending on the part of town. (An informal survey of friends and colleagues revealed this is, in fact, quite often not noticed.)

To understand why, you might first look north and West, to the Red River Valley along the North Dakota border. The Red River flows north into Canada and, eventually, Hudson Bay, but “valley” is a real misnomer; locals believably claim this to be the flattest place on earth.

You also need to look to the past. Driving through the Red River Valley feels akin to being at sea, the earth and sky stretching to their fullest in all directions.* This is not entirely a coincidence; the land here is flat because it was once the bottom of a vast, shallow, ancient lake, Lake Agassiz, formed by melting glaciers. (*Or it feels depressingly dull. Mileage may vary)

Among Giants: A Brief Hydrological History of the Upper Midwest: streets.mn/2024/12/20/among-giants-...

Perspective-view, lidar-derived relative elevation image of the Similkameen River with shaded relief.

Perspective-view, lidar-derived relative elevation image of the Similkameen River.

Perspective-view, NAIP aerial imagery of the Similkameen River with shaded relief.

#Lidar relative elevation images and draped imagery of the Similkameen River #floodplain near the BC/WA border looking toward Little Chopaka Mtn and Palmer Lake. Made for the WA Geological Survey. #PNW #geography #geomorphology www.flickr.com/photos/wasta...

I Won a Map Store what happened next will shock you YouTube video by Andrew Middleton

Here we go, a brief story of how I became the owner.of New England's oldest map store. youtu.be/wFI-lnikjJM?...

#30DayMapChallenge - Day 6 : Raster
"X-Ray of the Arcachon Bay" (France). DEM from IGN (RGE-Alti 1m)

Hello! The Atlas of Design shows off some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing cartographic design. Every two years, we publish a new volume of full-color maps, selected from worldwide competition and judged by an expert panel. Happy to be part of Bluesky!

#maps #cartography #books #design

Thanks! I used an application called Quick Terrain Modeler and a bit of Photoshop for these.

HT to @chaneyswiney.com's Peakscapes series for providing inspiration for these!

New #lidar images of the #Enchantments for the Washington Geological Survey. #PNW #Maps #CascadeRange

Why trees are failing to adapt to climate change Certain fungi give trees nutrients and water, but heat and drought are putting both at risk.

For @sciencenews.bsky.social: Trees and the fungi they depend on are being torn apart, a new study finds. As climates get warmer and drier, many trees should be migrating north—but some aren't.

That could be because their fungal friends can't make the journey.

www.sciencenews.org/article/clim...

Thanks-these examples were manually delineated.

Independent Map Sellers A shopping guide offered by the Independent Map Artists

Also, my little online shop is but one of many cartography shops! @pinakographos.bsky.social and I recently launched mapartists.org with 30-something (and growing!) independent map sellers. Let your favorite cartographers cover all your gifting needs!

To say: my profile pic is a LiDAR image showing the river-ghosts—historical meanders—of the Lower Mississippi.
Water, wandering, wilfully.
It’s by Daniel Coe, who has deep-mapped the pasts of many rivers.
See more of his work at dancoecarto.com/work
& below.
What wild, wondrous beings rivers are.

Image of the Black Mountains in North Carolina, cast in a gradient reminiscent of sunset hues: orange at the top to dark purple at the bottom. Summits are labeled with their names and elevations.

Image of Half Dome and its surroundings in Yosemite National Park, cast in a gradient of yellowish blue. Summits are labeled with their names and elevations.

Image of the Front Range in Rocky Mountain National Park, cast in a gradient of yellow to red. Summits are labeled with their names and elevations.

A favorite recent project: Peakscapes. I love the layered looks you get in the #mountains, and I always want to be able to name everything in view. These designs provide a cleaner, more idealized view of the landscape than a photo can.

Are they #maps? Or geographic art? I'm not sure.

Plain hill shaded image of long-runout landslides in the Cedar River Valley revealed by lidar. These forested landslides are not visible in aerial photographs, but become apparent when viewed with bare-earth lidar. Image by Daniel E. Coe, Washington Geological Survey

Colorized hill shaded image of long-runout landslides in the Cedar River Valley revealed by lidar. The color highlights the landslides, revealing there relationship to the river and valley walls. Image by Daniel E. Coe, Washington Geological Survey

Gray hill shaded map of the Lava Flows from West Crater in Skamania County. The flows are hard to separate from the surrounding landforms. This volcano most recently erupted lava about 8,000 years ago. Image by Daniel E. Coe, Washington Geological Survey

Colorized hill shaded map of the Lava Flows from West Crater in Skamania County. This volcano most recently erupted lava about 8,000 years ago. The colors (and additional shading) highlight the lava flows and show how they are superimposed on one another. Image by Daniel E. Coe, Washington Geological Survey

It’s amazing how one “simple” trick—color-coding landscape features in bare earth LIDAR data—can increase the readability of topography.

Image from the Washington Geological Survey (Washington State DNR)/Dan Coe

www.flickr.com/photos/wasta...

#dataviz 📊 #cartography🗺️