The Heart of Canyonlands National Park, Utah

A gorgeous map by Tom Patterson:

At the ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop held in Banff, Alberta, I introduced two prototype maps made in part with Terrain Texture Shader software. Both maps feature textures rendered from digital elevation models that resemble the hand-drawn rock hachures found on topographic maps of the Alps. The new rock texturing technique works best on cliffy landscapes with horizontal strata.

Brad Washburn’s 1978 The Heart of the Grand Canyon, co-produced with National Geographic and with contributions from SwissTopo, inspired the making of this map. The arid-land textures derive from shaded relief, texture shading, and NAIP aerial photos blended together. The river rapids are the only manual element, which I painted in Adobe Photoshop using NAIP as a guide.

As a bonus, this map is in the public domain so you may use it however you wish, including commercially!

(via Wired: Cartographic Arts: Beautiful Maps From the Atlas of Design)

See also: Other posts on this blog tagged ‘maps’.

Craft and creativity

Canyonlands National Park texture and shaded relief map

“National Park Service cartographer Tom Patterson is a master of texture and shaded relief. He’s released this gorgeous map of Canyonlands National to the public domain.” — Wired

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