Following my previous post I have been digging around archive.org for interesting spatial/ geographical related resources. A search for “geographic” yielded a number of back issues of the National Geographic Magazine. They date back as far as 1888 and contain some great images and maps. There are some real gems to be had, such as the “Scenes from every land” series (link to one here) that contain century-old photographs from every continent. I was also amused to see an article titled “Notes about ants and their resemblance to man“. I have shared a few of my highlights here.

The top map is taken from the 1907 edition of “Scenes from Every Land”. It shows a map of the world with its key trade routes. I suspect today’s equivalent would be much more complex such is the nature of contemporary global transport.

My final two favourites are taken from the 1894 edition of the National Geographic Magazine and illustrate climatic variables for the USA. The top shows the mean temperature for the hottest 6 weeks of the year, and the lower map shows the sum of daily mean temperatures above 6 degrees. Despite their age I really like the clarity and detail in these maps.

I am therefore extremely impressed with the University of Waterloo’s (Canada)Snowtweets Project. The project, inspired by a UK snow map from Ben Marsh, encourages people to measure snow depths in their local area and instantly publish them to the web via Twitter. Snowtweet users can downlo

ad a standalone viewer called Snowbird that has been developed with Adobe Flex and Papervision3D.  The use of NASA Visible Earth Imagery, a clean interface and great graphics make this a very compelling application. I hope Snowtweets will become very popular in the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter so that it provides a great source of data by empowering the public to engage with cold/ temperate regions research.