Map Skills and Coordinates
This line of latitude is located at exactly 0° and divides the Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
What is the equator?
This 3-letter acronym refers to computer systems designed to capture, store, and display geographic data.
What is GIS?
Often shaped like a box in the corner, this map feature defines the symbols, colours, and lines used on the map.
What is the legend?
This famous 1569 projection preserves direction for marine navigation but massively distorts the size of landmasses near the poles.
What is the Mercator Projection?
On a standard topographic map, contour lines that are spaced very close together indicate this type of terrain.
What is steep terrain?
Modern cartographers use this light-based technology, similar to radar, which fires lasers from aircraft to map ground elevation.
What is LiDAR?
This shows the relationship between a distance on the map and the actual distance on the ground.
What is the scale?
This alternative projection accurately represents the actual area and size of continents, but severely distorts their shape.
What is the Gall-Peters Projection?
The imaginary line that divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
What is the Prime Meridian?
To map the geography of other planets, NASA uses this radar-mapping spacecraft named after the Portuguese explorer who circumnavigated the globe.
What is Megallen
On a topographical map, these brown lines connect points of equal elevation above sea level.
What are contour lines?
This "compromise" projection balances size and shape distortion, making it a popular choice for National Geographic visual world maps.
What is the Winkel Tripel Projection or Robinson Projection
These lines measure distance East and West of the Prime Meridian, but they run North to South.
What are lines of longitude?
Launched in 1972, this NASA program provided the longest-running continuous orbital imagery of Earth's surface for mapmakers.
What is Landsat?
A map key might use this specific 7-letter word for the lines that connect points of equal temperature on a weather map.
What is an isotherm?
Because flat maps cannot represent a sphere without distortion, cartographers refer to this shape—the true mathematical shape of the Earth—when making calculations.
What is a Geoid or Oblait Sphereoid?
Because the Earth is a sphere, all flat maps suffer from this issue, which changes the shape, size, or distance of landmasses.
What is distortion?
This term refers to the standard grid system of local, regional, or global coordinates used to anchor a digital map to the real Earth.
What is a geodetic datum?
On a map, "bathymetric" features refer to the measurement of this, the underwater equivalent of topography.
What is ocean depth?
This type of projection is created by projecting the Earth's surface onto a cone, commonly used for mapping mid-latitude regions like the United States or Europe.
What is a Conic Projection?