I chose to georeference North Dakota and part of Western Minnesota on David Rumsey’s website. I was grateful that I finally figured out the process to overlay an old map onto the current one, as I was struggling to do so in class. This is what I came up with:
One part of the process which I found very difficult was getting the points within a square mile or so, because if the points were differently angled relative to one another, the map would turn out to be an eldritch abomination akin to Lovecraft’s illustrations of Cthulhu. This problem with projecting led to some frustrations as I tried to match the points correctly.
This technology can definitely be useful to help cartographers track the changes in human development throughout decades and across history, allowing scientists to use that in their data as well. Scientists can use this strategy to overlay data they have collected and view the history of such data through the layers of different maps, like they have been doing for decades. The projection problems are annoying, but some simple projection math should help fix those bugs. Even ArcGIS has trouble projecting maps correctly sometimes. The multiple export options definitely help, and may be useful for many different scientific fields, not just the natural sciences. Even the social sciences could benefit from this technology, using survey data.
Another perk of this format is that it works very well on almost any scale as long as the projection algorithms are tuned in and squared away. Someone can map a small town or neighborhood just as well as a state or country. The scale versatility and the compatibility of these georeferencing files extend the use of georeferencing practically anywhere. The relativity of the location system is also useful. If scientists don’t know exactly where a point may lie on the globe, they can use the history of spaces around that point to find out where it needs to go, using the layers that they have collected, and then corroborate that with literary descriptions. The technology is very compliant with many different forms of data collection, which makes it very versatile.
