Source: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/49259main_flat_earth_nightm.jpe
“Earth at Night” is a satellite image courtesy of NASA and DMSP depicting the world at night in each region of the globe. This map is an extremely informative image that provides insight into phenomena such global population distribution trends and relative levels of economic development. By examining the lights of the world at night, it can be deduced that most of the world’s population lives near the coastal regions of countries. Additionally, urban centers are prominently featured as clusters of bright lights. With this knowledge, anyone can easily spot and point out the major urban areas of the world. Moreover, major landforms and their effect on population distribution can be observed. For example, the lack of lights in the region occupied by the Sahara Desert in northern Africa reveals that this area is relatively uninhabited. However, it should also be noted that this map is slightly misleading in terms of major centers of urbanization, for it is also an indicator of economic development for regions throughout the world. Access to electricity is an amenity enjoyed by the citizens of more developed nations so an image of the amount of electricity being used at night in each country reveals their relative level of economic development. This is clearly seen in the image with the most developed countries such as the United States and those of Western Europe appearing to be extremely bright on the world map at night. Although some nations in Africa have extremely large populations, this map would not depict this because of their lack of electricity during non-daylight hours. This map is interesting in that it appears to be a simple map of the world at night, but it reveals so much more about the world than would be expected. The trends and patterns that are depicted in this image are far more informative than one would expect.
Map 2 - War and Death
This cartogram of war and death in 2002 paints a grim picture for some of the world’s less developed nations. This map depicts the world in terms of each country’s size in proportion to its number of deaths due to war in the year 2002. If the number of war deaths throughout the world were distributed equally in proportion to each country’s size, then the map would appear undistorted. However, as seen in the above image, this is not the case. Africa obviously bears the brunt of the number of people lost in fighting wars. In fact, the website on which this map was found revealed that The Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for 26% of all deaths due to war during the year 2002. That is one country that absorbed over a fourth of the globe’s loss of life due to war. An interesting aspect of this map is the correspondence between knowledge of war-torn countries and their relative sizes on this map. The Middle Eastern nations appear extremely bloated on this image because of the constant wars and thousands of lives lost because of them. This map is interesting to me because of the dramatic distortion caused by the cartogram’s topic. It’s disturbing to see small countries ballooning to epic proportions simply because of war.
Map 3 - World Happiness
The World Happiness map is a survey map exhibiting the relative levels of happiness of the citizens of the world’s countries. This map has a six color scale going from unhappy (yellow) to average (orange) to happy (dark red). The image reveals trends in the subjective happiness of the people in each country of the world. For example, the happiest countries according to this map are also the most industrialized and developed nations of the world with countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia appearing in dark red. The unhappiest people, according to this map, appear to be in the less industrialized countries mainly in Africa, with various other countries in parts of Asia. The largest nation that reported and unhappy populace was Russia appearing as a yellow band over Asia and most of Europe. However, it should be remembered that this is a survey of subjective happiness – some cultures are more likely to report high or low levels of happiness which could have been interpreted by the researchers according to their own cultural bias. This map is interesting because of its close correspondence to the level of economic development. Also, I expected the opposite pattern with less developed nations reporting higher levels of happiness. This, of course, could be due to my own cultural bias of hearing that the people with less appreciate more and are therefore happier because of it. In any case, this map is a subjective rendering of the reported happiness of people of the global community.
