NACIS 2026

Launching and Scaling Digital Map Accessibility for the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey
Caroline Rose, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey
Brandon Biggs, XR Navigation
The ground-breaking visual, auditory, and interactive text map of the Quaternary Geology of Wisconsin, which we presented in draft form at NACIS 2025, showed it is possible to make complex maps accessible. Now that the map has been released, users can “hear” shapes, understand topological relationships, and access over 3000 features in 16 layers. Users can navigate the map via keyboard, can access the geographic features using a screen reader, and can tailor the settings to suit their own access needs. This talk will cover the process and roll-out of this highly complex, accessible map and our ideas for how the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey will scale this work from one accessible map to other publications.

Translating WCAG as Cartographers - A Framework for Visual Map Accessibility
Jakob Ruffner, Esri
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is the baseline for the US' Title II/III amendment to the ADA. It requires that all State, Federal, and Private organizations provide accessible content. However, it is unclear as to what exactly counts as adequate compliance, especially true for map design, whose cartography involves complicated visualization choices that don't fit into simple binaries. In this session, we attempt to turn the often-vague language of WCAG into a relatable framework for us cartographers. Based on projects across many industries, this interpretation allows us to make user-driven maps without over-simplifying them, hinging on leveraging application UIs, clear symbology, and alternative access formats.

Lights, Camera, Action: Putting Cartographic Accessibility on Film
Jack Swab, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Laura Zierer, American Printing House for the Blind
Cartographic accessibility for individuals with low vision or blindness is an important facet of cartographic design but can remain abstract in the cartography classroom. This talk explores the motivation behind and the production of a short film about cartographic accessibility. Made in collaboration with the American Printing House for the Blind and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, we explore how we created this film and its impacts in a 100-level, general education cartography class.

Cartographic Accessibility at the American Printing House for the Blind
Laura Zierer, American Printing House for the Blind
Jack Swab, The University of Tennessee--Knoxville
In this presentation, we will screen a short film made in conjunction with the American Printing House for the Blind and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The video highlights the American Printing House for the Blind’s cartographic efforts and the positive impact that their products have on increasing geographic and cartographic literacy for individuals with low vision or blindness.

Getting Physical (with data): Crocheting Central Park
Natalie Correa, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In this talk, I discuss the challenges of planning and creating a crocheted map of Central Park in New York City. I outline planning considerations for the pattern, the logistics of crocheting, and the pressures of creating within a classroom environment. Along the way, I discuss the larger implications of seemingly impractical creative cartographic pursuits.

Watercolor Maps: the Long and Short of It
Molly O’Halloran, Molly O’Halloran, Inc.
A tale of two commissions: the year-plus creation of a visitor map for a California botanical garden, and the less-than-a-week production of a map and illustrations for a travel article in T Magazine (New York Times). Contrasting these two projects illustrates how the custom watercolor process can be modified to meet vastly different timelines and approval approaches.

Authenticity, Tangibility, and Sustainability in the GeoGraphics Lab
Alicia Iverson, Penn State Geography, The GeoGraphics Lab
Dr. Anthony C. Robinson, Penn State Geography, The GeoGraphics Lab
The current generation of (novice) cartographers have a dizzying array of fantastic digital tools to pursue our craft. In the GeoGraphics Lab we have noticed the novelty and value associated with creating tangible maps on paper and other materials, wrestling with their limitations, and working collaboratively to develop authentic products. In this talk we highlight examples that show how tangible mapping has surprised and challenged us, and we articulate a model for a university cartography lab experience that bolsters its own sustainability via the pursuit of authentic and tangible mapping.

Oil Portraits and Sign Painting
Dylan Moriarty, The Washington Post
Lessons learned from wading into oil portraits and sign painting.

Mapping New Deal Utopias: Dynamics of Neighborhood Mobility in Greendale, Wisconsin
Mia Nighgroh, University of Tennessee Knoxville
Utopian planned communities like Greendale, WI were championed during the Roosevelt administration as part of the New Deal’s efforts to create model suburban communities and facilitate economic stability for low- and middle-income white families. Following the end of the New Deal, the neighborhood transitioned from federal to private funding. Utopian communities like Greendale were designed to promote financial stability, but the shifting economic landscape destabilized the geographic and social structure that had been established. This research examines the dynamics of mobility and sheds light on the migratory strategies residents used to navigate the economic precarity of structural change.

Mapping What Was Hidden: A LiDAR Approach to Unmarked Graves and Land Justice
Spenser Anderson
Kristopher Smith, Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC)
Accurate methods for locating unmarked grave sites, including ground penetration radar, arborist analysis, and walking sites, are precise but resource intensive. Given the vast number of unmarked burial sites in the States, faster and cheaper preliminary tools are needed. Using LiDAR data and historical records, we have developed a Red-Green-Amber model that enables individuals, organizations, and researchers to screen large swaths of land and prioritize sites for further investigation; thus, improving the speed and reach of unmarked grave site identification. For communities navigating heirs' property disputes, where unmarked graves can both evidence historical land use and complicate title resolution, this tool aids in the fight for justice.

The Geography of Prosperity
Nina Feldman Motivf, Web Cartographer
Tova Perlman, Motivf, Data Scientist
AJ Ashton, Carotgrapher
This presentation introduces the Geography of Prosperity Index, a new framework for evaluating long-term urban success across 250 U.S. cities. Moving beyond traditional economic metrics, the index integrates five dimensions: population renewal, climate resilience, automation readiness, social cohesion, and governance/foresight, to assess future readiness. Geography of Prosperity Index results are visualized through an interactive map that reveals emerging patterns of opportunity and risk. The session will explore the methodology, cartographic design choices, and key spatial insights, highlighting how mapping prosperity can better inform planners, policymakers, and investors about the evolving geography of the American Dream.

Reconstructing a neighborhood through community mapping: Urban renewal in Warren, Ohio
Jennifer Mapes, Kent State University
More than 1,000 U.S. cities lost whole neighborhoods to urban renewal in the 1950s-1970s. Records about the demographics and economics of these places are surprisingly hard to find. This paper describes efforts to document businesses, and later individuals, located in one of these neighborhoods. About 2,784 people lived in The Flats in Warren, Ohio in 1950 before the urban renewal area was identified in 1964. Our research shows that this was a racially integrated neighborhood and that displacements of urban renewal created a more segregated city. This research creates a framework for other small cities to document the individual- and neighborhood-level effects of this destructive policy.

Rooted Out: Gender, Hiring, and Disappearance in the Robinson Cartographic Family Tree
Helen Tosteson, UW-Madison
The Robinson academic family tree traces four generations of cartographic scholarship from a single root: Dr. Arthur Robinson. At UW-Madison, this tree is prized. But a closer look at its branches reveals a striking pattern: women are dramatically underrepresented, particularly as advisor nodes. I present a gendered analysis of the tree, examining where women appear, and where they disappear. Through generational counting and career tracing, I argue that the academic leak occurs through differential hiring into research universities, transitions into government and industry, and in at least one case, outright omission from the tree itself.

See What We See: Community Co Produced Spatial Meaning in Lindsay Heights, Milwaukee
Dulmini Nadeesha Jayawardana
This talk explores how residents of Lindsay Heights generated spatial knowledge through photovoice, revealing layers of meaning not typically visible in conventional mapping. Through community led photography and storytelling, participants articulated a spatial logic grounded in memory, environmental care, and collective resilience. These insights formed a layered, conceptual map that visualizes lived experience as spatial data. The talk demonstrates how qualitative, community generated meaning can be structured, interpreted, and integrated into cartographic practice, expanding what mapping can hold. It offers a model for co produced spatial representation that deepens understanding of place in Milwaukee and beyond.

Resurrecting Historical Geodata: A Vision-Language Model Approach to Integrating Property Assessment Records and Census Geographies
Elizaveta (Liz) Lepikhova (She/They)
Historical census records are essential for studying neighborhood change, yet key housing-market indicators are largely unavailable before 1930. This presentation introduces a GeoAI workflow for transforming historical property assessment records into structured geospatial data using vision-language models (VLMs) and automated record linkage in R. Using Milwaukee tax assessment rolls, we demonstrate how prompt engineering, iterative refinement, human validation, and scripted matching improve the reliability of extracting, linking, and mapping historical property data. We then integrate these data with an existing archive of racially restrictive covenants to produce neighborhood-level cartographic visualizations for historical and social justice research.

Using Maps To Expand Your Horizons And Identify Injustices
H. Jiahong Pan (They/them)
Maps influence my work. Growing up in San Francisco, maps — particularly the ones at San Francisco Muni bus shelters — helped me discover that a world existed beyond my community and that there were stories that existed in those maps. Maps also helped me explain stories to people when I freelanced as a journalist, including access to food in the Minneapolis neighborhood I live in.

Participatory Mapping Beyond Representation
Joy Ihuka
Participatory mapping serves to incorporate local knowledge into environmental planning and climate adaptation. It involves translating lived experiences and environmental observations into formal cartographic and GIS systems, impacting institutional decision-making. This talk reviews literature on participatory GIS, critical cartography, and community geography, focusing on how technical standards and planning requirements affect the recognition of local knowledge. It examines how participatory mapping both supports and constrains community engagement, addressing issues of representation and institutional incorporation. Examples from climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction illustrate tensions between local spatial knowledge and standardized mapping systems, highlighting the negotiation of environmental knowledge in planning contexts.

Audio Cartography: The New Frontier
Brandon Biggs, CEO of XR Navigation
For thousands of years, cartography has been either visual or tactile. We invite you to join us to learn how cartography can now extend to sound. Learn about auditory icons, ways to hear shapes, understand spatial relationships using your ears, and listen to the world. Through real-world examples and live demonstrations, attendees will experience how audio can communicate iconology, distance, direction, topological relationships, orientation, and environmental context in ways traditional maps simply cannot. We’ll also discuss accessibility, map design, and why auditory cartography may fundamentally be a paradigm shift in cartography, expand who maps are built for, and how humans interact with space itself."

Sound Cartography: Listening as a Cartographic Practice
Nuzhat Tabassum Nawshin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cartography has long been treated as a visual medium, but spatial experience is also shaped by listening, movement, and divided attention. In this talk, I review selected strands of sound cartography, from soundscape studies and sonification to audiovisual and locative audio mapping. I discuss how these approaches expand what maps can communicate about place, narrative, uncertainty, and mobile spatial experience, while revealing unresolved questions about design guidance, evaluation, and real-world use. I use these questions to consider how sound cartography might develop as a more experimental and inclusive practice.

What does a smell look like? Considerations for olfactory cartography
Jake Steinberg, The Minnesota Star Tribune
Most maps depict what our eyes can see and the ground we can feel under our feet. But what about the other senses? In this talk, I will discuss a map I made for the Minnesota Star Tribune depicting the landscape of smells — or, smellscape — of the Minnesota State Fair, where the aroma of roasting corn is as prominent as any mountain. Depicting smells visually isn’t easy. I offer a whiff of what I learned from this olfactory cartographic challenge.

Beyond Long-Form Cartographic Improvisation: Composition, Columbaria, Dance, and a Return to the Atlas
Eric Theise
Since its 2022 Lisbon premiere I’ve given 50+ performances of A Synesthete’s Atlas across North America & Europe. Until 2026 these projected map manipulations were typically ~50 minute collaborations with improvising musicians recruited in cities I tour through. This talk discusses recent developments that break with this practice including:
• commissioned, composed works
• site-specific performances
• collaborations with choreographers
• integration with movement sensors
• breaking long-form improvisation into movements, guided by structure &titles taken from atlases
The talk includes extensive video documentation and is complemented by Saturday evening’s performance at Woodland Pattern (see Workshops/Field Trips).

A Thousand Raves: Towards a Posthuman Cartography of Electronic Dance Music Culture
Zach Thorpe, UC Berkeley
Conventional cartographic design often upholds subject-centered logics, leading to maps that represent complex places as fixed spaces. How would one incorporate relationality and becoming within maps to open alternatives to this paradigm? This talk explores these possibilities by outlining how posthumanism can be used as a critical praxis for developing a theoretical foundation, methodology and set of practical applications for a “posthuman cartography”. Using EDM/rave culture as an affective and technologically mediated site of mapping, this research challenges cartographic humanism in favor of maps that attend to becoming rather than being, culminating in an interactive posthuman map.

Wayfinding Maps for the Museum of Exploration
Harrison Cole, The National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Museum of Exploration (MOE) relies on a variety of wayfinding maps to guide visitors to and throughout its space. And while wayfinding maps are indeed commonly referred to as “maps”, they often call for unique design and production approaches, distinct from, for example, a locator map on exhibit signage. My talk will explore the range of wayfinding maps created for the MOE, and how they might differ from more conventional reference or thematic maps.

Creative Cartography for Better Freight Planning
Meg Fredericks, CPCS
Griffin Rock, CPCS
The freight planning industry in the United States has traditionally valued functional visuals above design-driven maps and data visualizations. In our work at CPCS, we lean into setting ourselves apart by placing a higher value on cartographic design. Using static and interactive visualizations, we’ve transformed complex and occasionally dry datasets into maps that tell a story, influence policy decisions, and appeal to broader audiences. We’ll provide examples of freight maps that won over our clients and were ultimately featured in public-facing reports.

Leveling Up the Bus: Exploring Alternative Transit Cartographies
Carlos Gonzalez, Syracuse University
US transportation mapping is notorious for prioritizing car infrastructure. To oppose this tendency, I present alternative transportation maps for Syracuse, NY that center transit. I start by altering traditional transportation mapping conventions to only show bus lines before adopting more creative styles that capture the emotional journey of transit, a sense of space for bus lines, and a sense of place for destinations. I then offer a map showcasing the absence of transit on a regionwide level. I conclude with future challenges and opportunities for transit cartography.

Pixel by Pixel, Map by Map: Designing a VR Environment to Study How We Navigate Differently
Susannah Cox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Bruno Wu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Understanding how people navigate space requires tools capable of capturing the nuance of that process. This project developed an immersive VR environment in Unity for the Apple Vision Pro to study how adults with ADHD navigate compared to typically developing adults. Working on an emerging platform meant navigating a steep learning curve and solving unforeseen challenges along the way. This involved extensive trial and error, requiring us to rebuild the experiment from a pre-existing study and implement creative solutions to ensure participant comfort. The result is a functional, research-ready virtual environment for exploring how different people move through and make sense of their surroundings.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District's New Schematic Map
Erik Breedon, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District manages federal water management and inland navigation projects in the upper Ohio River watershed. While not as dizzying as Pittsburgh's street network, it's a difficult map to fit on a piece of paper. Acknowledging and inspired by 100 years of transit maps, geographer Erik Breedon simplified the hydrography and dozens of civil works projects in the district's area of responsibility into efficient schematic maps. This visual-heavy presentation will explore the evolution of these map products and the cartographic design decisions made along the way.

Crandall Cemetery: Mapping Culture, Protection, and Gullah/Geechee Resilience in Northeast Florida
Glenda Simmons Jenkins, Gullah Geechee Cultural Community Trust
Kathie Carswell, Gullah Geechee Cultural Community Trust
Christopher Mader, University of Miami IDSC
Theresa Pinto, P.E.E.R. Group
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, northeast Florida's formerly enslaved population increased as Gullah/Geechee Peoples from the coastal Carolinas and Georgia migrated into the region for railroad and timber jobs. They established communities, inside now vanished tenant labor camps, where they worshipped and buried their dead. Human burials remain on these Nassau County lands purchased and owned by a private, multinational timber corporation. In 2022 the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Community Trust (GGCCT) began advocating for the protection of African American burials, as development and climate change impacts threaten these sacred sites. GGCCT authored a management plan, used historic documents to develop maps, and conducted LIDAR analysis and drone mapping for Crandall Cemetery, an environmentally sensitive site near the St. Marys River.

The Foundational Cartography of Climate Change
John Cloud, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Anthropology, Arctic Studies Center
Dr. Elisa Palomino ([email protected]) scholar of historic and contemporary boreal and arctic cultures, Cuenca, Spain
All cartographers, especially if working at global scales, map climate change, whether they realize it or not. Elisa Palomino and I propose a project linking two of the greatest cartographers of modernity. Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), born into the depths of the Little Ice Age, had access to historical records from the preceding Medieval Climate Anomaly; he presented the Northwest Passage as though it were still open. Richard Edes Harrison (1901-1994) became an "accidental cartographer" on the eve of the Second World War. His novel azimuthal projections, especially of boreal and arctic regions, presented the Modern Climate Anomaly already underway, before it was commonly realized.

Enterprising Women: University Women, Fundraising, and Adventures in the Map Trade
Christina Dando, University of Nebraska Omaha
In the late 1920s, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) began a "Million Dollar Fellowship Fund" to create a scholarship endowment for women's graduate education. One of the activities that AAUW branches undertook to raise funds was the creation and sale of pictorial maps. The Hibbing Minnesota Branch created a historical map of "The Arrowhead," published in 1929, that was so successful that it is still available today. Using the Hibbing branch's records (meeting minutes, letters, newsletters, sales logs), I examine the women's intentional engagement in the map trade to further women's higher education.

How the Thirsty Have Fallen: A Look at the Changing Colorado Craft Brewing Industry Through Maps
Kristopher Kuzera University of Denver
For nearly half a century, the Colorado Craft Beer Industry has seen incredible growth. However, within the past decade, the industry has seen substantial change where once successful organizations have closed their doors and new locations are becoming increasingly scarce. Numerous factors contribute to the recent shift in the once vibrant Colorado trade, including changing consumption patterns, economic stress, ownership turnover, and slow pandemic recovery. Although this research focuses on Colorado, these patterns are largely universal around the United States. This paper will use mapping to explore how the industry in Colorado has reshaped in recent years, from competition to collaboration, from small community origins to nationwide accessibility and back again. We will look at spatial and temporal patterns of brewery distribution across different regions to see where the largest shifts are occurring and what impacts that might have. We celebrate diversity of ownership, production, and participation among women and members of minority communities, which has changed the face of Colorado craft beer. The future of craft beer as a unique cultural experience in Colorado will be explored.

The Mexico Valley After Conquest as Depicted by the “Map of Tenochtitlan”
Fatima Koli Barnard College
Gergely Baics, Barnard College
Caterina Pizzigoni, Barnard College
Ines Perez, Barnard College
What can a nearly 500 year old map reveal about a world transformed by conquest and its mapmakers? Created by Indigenous Nahua scholars, the Map of Tenochtitlan (c. 1530s) offers a rare Indigenous view of Mexico City and the Valley of Mexico. Blending Nahua and European cartographic traditions, it depicts interconnected urban and social worlds. While often studied as art, we examine it from a spatial history lens. Georeferencing this map, a challenge given its multiple scales, reveals the mapmakers’ underlying visions and priorities. Digitizing and creating an archive of the map opens up the possibility to reflect on the complex human and natural ecosystems of the Mexico Valley that survived and continued to thrive after conquest.

Visualizing the Complex World of 1492
Brandon Plewe Brigham Young University
Historical Geography is complicated, especially the pre-modern world where even basic concepts like "country" and "border" were less standardized than they are today. How can we map this world in a way that is simple to enter and store, intellectually honest, and easy for a broad audience to understand? The political geography of 1492 presents an especially fruitful case for this. To create a map of the world at this "Pivot of History," a strategy was developed (based on multiple past experiences with historical GIS and cartography) to represent uncertainty and vagueness in a simple form in GIS. Most notably, boundaries were stored with a general sense of width, ranging from modern-looking, legally defined lines to broad frontier zones that were dozens or even hundreds of miles wide, that were only vaguely defined and/or only loosely controlled. Using an algorithm of GIS analysis tools, this dataset is automatically transformed into a fuzzy set estimation of Territoriality, then visualized cartographically so that each state (or even different portions of each state) appear more or less "fuzzy." The net effect is that map readers get a rather complete view of a pre-Eurocentric World, but also get a rather honest view of where we have more or less knowledge of that world.

This year’s DEI-sponsored series centers on experiences of people engaging with communities and neighborhoods and working across diverse identities. Through their work, our speakers use cartography in various ways to reveal meanings, uncover memories, illuminate injustices, and envision different futures.

Panelists:
Dulmini Nadeesha Jayawardana
Elizaveta (Liz) Lepikhova
H. Jiahong Pan (They/them)
Joy Ihuka

Earthling Maps: A Locator Map Maker Beyond Web Mercator
Brian T. Jacobs, Habitable Worlds
Earthling Maps is a new way for a broad audience to make locator maps, whether local, regional, or planetary extents, without compromising on cartographic principles. To achieve this, the app uses a novel map renderer that automatically switches map projections appropriate to scale—far beyond Web Mercator and globes—with a fully labeled and highly customizable basemap out of the box. This talk will demo the app and discuss its design and development, detailing the tech used to reproject global tilesets with custom projections in real time. The talk will also cover best practices for producing locator maps that embed and read well on small screens, in emails, browsers, and video.

From Open Source to Newsroom: Integrating a New Mapping System at Reuters
Casey Miller, Thomson Reuters
Scott Reinhard, [email protected]
Bringing a new open-source mapping system into a large news organization takes more than good code. It takes translation between the people building infrastructure and the people making daily graphics. In this joint talk, we'll share two sides of the adoption story at Reuters: the technical work of setting up the system and collaborating with newsroom engineers, and the design work of wrapping it into reusable components for the graphics team. We'll cover the tradeoffs of developer-oriented tooling, what it takes to get something actually used, and lessons learned along the way.

From Global Mapper to MAPublisher: A Production Cartography Workflow
Oliver Normanton, Avenza Systems Inc
Rebecca Bennett
Jessica Vachon
Gabriel Demizio
This talk presents a practical, end-to-end workflow bridging Global Mapper and MAPublisher for professional map production. Topics include layer and attribute preparation in Global Mapper, export strategies that carry styling directly into Illustrator, and importing and refining that data in MAPublisher and Adobe Illustrator. The presentation also covers scripting and batch processing to automate repetitive preparation tasks. Rather than a rigid step-by-step process, the presentation offers adaptable strategies that address common friction points in the pipeline, giving professional cartographers practical tools for faster, cleaner map production.

Preserving the Legacy of USGS Topographic Maps
Andrew Stauffer, U.S. Geological Survey
Elaine Guidero, U.S. Geological Survey
From hand-engraved copper plates to scribed mylar, 1884–2006 USGS topographic maps were paper-based. USGS warehouses hold vast amounts of analog materials, such as manuscripts and film negatives, used to create these maps. Since 2009, the fully digital US Topo maps are produced with GIS software. The 2022 release of topoBuilder enables users to create on-demand custom maps anywhere in the U.S. and its territories with the latest available data from The National Map. Despite the obsolescence of these historical mapping records after the digital transition, we explore their value and efforts for long-term preservation in the National Archives.

USGS OnDemand Topos: How Product Requirements Shape the Design of a Topographic Map Product Catalog
Bethany Walker, U.S. Geological Survey
In 2022 the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geospatial Program launched topoBuilder, a web-based application which allows users to request and customize topographic maps, referred to as OnDemand Topos. TopoBuilder initially offered a 1:24,000-scale map, called 7.5-Minute Topo. Today, there are four product configurations available, with scales ranging from 1:24,000 to 1:250,000. OnDemand Topos are designed using ArcGIS Pro and integrated into topoBuilder using Esri’s Topographic Production Service. This presentation overviews the OnDemand Topo design process and goals for future OnDemand Topo products.

Creating a personal geospatial data history map
Guthrie Alexander
Most of us are sitting on a surprising amount of personal geospatial data: tracks from GPS watches and handhelds, hiking, biking, and running routes, the location history our phones collect (with and without our knowledge), and every geotagged photo we've ever taken. It all lives in different places, in different services, and in different formats. I'll walk through building a centralized repository for my own spatial data, one that's accessible from anywhere, takes minimal upkeep (hopefully), and serves as both a spatial memory and a motivator to get out and explore more.

Sonoran Desert Journeys
Joanne Coutts, Independent
Travel is a way of life in the Sonoran Desert. For centuries O’odham, Piipaash, and Quechan people have been guided through the desert by the locations of water sources and the shapes of the mountains. Today, people immigrating to the U.S. also use mountains and water sources to guide their journeys through the desert. Sonoran Desert Journeys explores the connections between Indigenous routes of travel with migrant journeys and humanitarian aid stations, and how O’odham song maps and place names support search and rescue and recovery for migrants who are disappeared in the desert.

Cartography of "Our Neighborhood Walk": what can storymaps tell us about human-canine-environment interactions?
Jonathan Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alton L. Hipps, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Makinnley Tomberlin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The “Our Neighborhood Walk” project explores how using personal geo-enabled tracking devices and interactive storymaps can advance understanding of the shared experiences and emotional connections between pet guardians and their companion dogs while walking together. We employ personal visual storytelling design techniques to unlock new insights into how humans and canines collectively and individually perceive elements of the built and natural environment. By cartographically recreating the dynamic, co-constructed sense-of-place that evolves during a routine walk, we aim to facilitate greater awareness of human-canine-environment interactions and prompt critical reflection on how to enhance those interactions in the future.

Personal Mapping: Hand-drawn life stories
David Nuttall
This talk will dive into the details of a large commissioned map and how the customer homework (source data) leads to research and then hand-drawing a detailed map that includes so many aspects of their life yet feels like a cohesive real place. Stepping through the entire process including concept, discussions, planning, layered feature drawing, procrastination, late additional feature adding, and the nervousness of shipping a finished map. David will show progress images and demonstrate how personal details and non-map aspects can indeed be included in the landscape while getting a glimpse into his mind and thought process.

Unlocking Possibilities With Open Map Data
Jessica Acosta Rodriguez, Esri
The future of open map data is supported by accessible, interoperable, high-quality datasets that fuel innovation and collaboration across industries and communities. As the demand for this data grows, organizations like Esri are advancing this vision through partnerships with the Overture Maps Foundation. By integrating open data from different sources, Overture delivers curated, schema-consistent, and quality-assured datasets, offering a reliable foundation for GIS professionals. In this presentation, you will learn how Esri is leveraging Overture’s data through different basemap products, as well as how you can contribute and have access to this data —unlocking new possibilities for open, creative, and collaborative cartography.

Spatially Optimized Parquet
Matt George, Esri
Jeremy Bartley
Parquet has become the standard for large-scale data analytics, and with GeoParquet and native spatial types, it's quickly becoming the core format for the next generation of spatial query engines. However, visualizing this data on the web typically requires standing up servers in front of the data or converting to other formats like Vector Tiles. Come learn about the new open Spatially Optimized Parquet format, which combines XZ spatial clustering with multiscale quantization. Web clients read Parquet files directly, streaming datasets with billions of features on the web.

galleryofpossibilities: A QGIS plugin for feminist map icons
Meghan Kelly, Syracuse University
Feminist Mapping Collective at Syracuse University
Map icons are tiny, space saving symbols that embed meaning and locate people, places, and stories. Map icons, however, are not “one-size-fits-all” and they (along with their libraries) have been re-envisioned through a feminist lens. The galleryofpossibilities is a map icon digital library seeded by feminist map icons for the city of Boston designed during community-based workshops. Here, the Feminist Mapping Collective officially launches the galleryofpossibilities as a publicly available QGIS plugin showcasing the tools’ features and functionality, feminist development process, research impacts, and future extensions.

You Already Know the Hard Part: Publishing Your Maps with MapLibre
Stephanie May
You already know the hard part of making a map. What's stopping you from building your own web maps is a handful of small, learnable gaps, the ones you keep meaning to get to. Right? Good news. This talk decodes the web mapping stack (data, tiles, styles, hosting) and shows how MapLibre ties them together, so the parts you already know can click into place. We'll make room for questions you've never found the right space to ask out loud. You'll leave with a galaxy brain, ready to dust off an old project or start a new one.

Curating the Pinhead map icon library
Quincy Morgan, Wayside Mapping
Pinhead (https://pinhead.ink) is a next-generation collaborative library of thousands of public domain map icons. Seeded from common icon sources like Maki, Temaki, and NPS, Pinhead brings a standard design language to classic pictograms while adding hundreds of newly drawn symbols and variants. This talk will cover the curation decisions behind the Pinhead library and show attendees how to use Pinhead in their own projects.

What Do Young Adults Think About Mobile Thematic News Maps?
Lily Houtman, Penn State University
Data journalism is one of the key ways the public encounters mobile thematic maps. There is emerging research on how to best design mobile maps for data journalism, but most of these studies focus on the map producers rather than map audiences. Here, I present the results from a series of focus groups to assess how audiences feel about a variety of design decisions. Specifically, these focus groups consisted of young adults audiences, due to concerns from data journalists that young people are not reading the news. Here, I present a summary of audience opinions related to interactivity, mobile design, map personalization, and thematic map type.

Under Pressure: How Stress Impacts the Map User
Bill Limpisathian, NeuroCarto Research Group, UW Cart Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Brynn D. Patrello, NeuroCarto Research Group, UW Cart Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Maps are often used in times of stress, yet we know very little about how a user’s psychological state shapes their map use. To fix this, we investigated how acute psychological stress influences cartographic interaction, including task performance and map perceptions. We used the proven Maastricht Acute Stress Test to induce stress in map users and compared their performance to a non-stressed control group. In this talk, we will discuss our findings and highlight what cartographers should do to cope with designing maps for stressful situations.

Giving attention to ADHD in cartography and visualization: design guidelines informed by a review and user study
Ab Mosca (they/them), Smith College
Heather Rosenfeld (they/she), Smith College
There has been surprisingly little research on the interplay between neurodivergence and usability of maps and general visualizations. This project begins to address this gap, particularly focusing on people with ADHD. We reviewed extant academic and professional research and guidelines on accessible cartography and data visualization in terms of their applicability to ADHD map/visualization users. Informed by this and by preliminary interviews with ADHD folks, we developed a user study. The study focuses on tactile mapping, a technique primarily studied for its usefulness to blind and visually impaired communities, but which we hypothesize also has promise for neuro-accessibility. Informed by our literature review and study results we present preliminary recommendations for ADHD-friendly map and visualization design.

Trust in Maps: A mixed-methods cartographic user study
Amelia Rudolph, Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Meghan Kelly, Syracuse University
Dr. Carolyn Fish, University of Oregon
User studies have emerged as a cartographic method particularly well-suited to analyze visual stimuli hosted online like digital and interactive maps. We ask: Does map trust vary between base map (i.e., vector-base maps and raster-base maps) and map types (e.g., reference maps and thematic maps)? We test these variables across two map locations resulting in a 2x2x2 between-subjects factorial study design. In our evaluation, we expand Prestby’s (2024) quantitative MAPTRUST assessment by including supplemental qualitative questions. From our results, we argue for continued evaluations of map trust through mixed methods approaches.

Making vivid maps: Expressive Geovisualization for Representing Spatial Vulnerability
Zhaoxu Sui, GeoGraphics Lab, Penn State
Cartographic representations of spatial vulnerability are used to explain key challenges in environment and health. Vulnerability maps can help us understand threats to people and the environment. They are often used to drive decision-making to create effective interventions. In this paper, we review existing approaches for static cartographic methods for representing vulnerability and we propose a new method called Expressive Geovisualization (EG) which employs visual representation methods that reflect the real-world context of thematic geospatial data. EG is designed to have visual impact that ensures vividness beyond traditional cartographic representation methods. We evaluate this new method through a user experiment comparing it with traditional approaches to characterize their potential utility and usability.