NACIS 2026

Mapping as Close Reading: Visualizing Abolition Geographies in Speculative Fiction
brianna sas-pérez, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
What if we use mapping, not just text, to represent findings from a close reading? I experiment with this methodological question through a counter-mapping of the Robledo neighborhood in Octavia Butler's (1993) Parable of the Sower. Thinking with abolition geography and Gilmore's "freedom as a place" (2017), I treat Butler's imagination and fictional worlds as cartographic data. Using layered, hand-drawn mapping techniques, I make visible how communities create safety through everyday spatial practice.

Other Worlds Are Possible: Fantasy world building as the basis for imagining hopeful futures in the classroom
Christopher Fowler, Penn State University
Students increasingly treat higher education as credentialing, while the wider culture struggles to imagine futures meaningfully better than the present. This talk argues that cartographic world building — the disciplined invention of physical geographies, climates, hydrologies, settlement systems, and trade networks for places that do not exist — offers a generative response to both crises. Drawing on EART-H, a procedurally modeled fantasy world built in R and deployed as an open Quarto book and tabletop campaign, I show how making maps for impossible places trains students to treat institutions as contingent, place-specific, and genuinely revisable.

Toward a Mapping of the Superhero Genre
James Tyner, Department of Geography, Kent State University
Metropolis. Gotham City. Hell’s Kitchen. Wakanda. For some people, these places hold little or no meaning. But for those invested in the superhero genre, these names conjure images of heroic exploits where superpowered characters do battle with other superpowered characters. Similar to other genre, the superhero genre is intimately place bound and several characters manifest a profound place-attachment. In this presentation I provide some tentative first steps. First, I provide a broad overview of maps in the superhero genre. Second, I provide a framework for a narrative mapping of superhero narratives, with special attention directed toward a mainstay of the genre, that is the hero’s journey.

Evaluating Research on the History of Maps in Mysteries
Judith Tyner, Professor emerita, California State University, Long Beach
Maps have been included in mystery novels for over 100 years and yet there has been little analysis of them. Chapters in books on maps in literature often ignore mystery fiction or discuss one or two authors, mostly from the ‘golden age’; some articles list books that contain maps, but there is no real history or analysis of the maps or even identification of their makers. Articles talk about which books contain maps, and often equate floor plans with maps, they do not discuss the style of the maps or their authors. In this presentation I look at the literature of maps in mystery fiction, examine and evaluate this research.

Should I stay or should I go? Encouraging early bushfire evacuation through fire spread prediction maps
Amy Griffin, RMIT University
Chloe Begg, Country Fire Authority
Matt Blanc, RMIT University
Erica Kuligowski, RMIT University
Paula Dootson, QUT University
Angela Gardner, Victorian Department of Education
Bushfire is a significant hazard in Australia, affecting much of the population. A policy of shared responsibility for protective action decision making between the government and residents means bushfire maps are a critical input into decision making. This presentation reports on the findings of a series of studies with end users that tested the efficacy and comprehensibility of bushfire spread predictions that were added to traditional bushfire warning maps in a simulated fire scenario. It reflects on the role of maps in the wider information ecosystem that residents use to understand emergency situations and the complexities of communicating what is known in situations that are often highly uncertain.

Reimagining Heat: An experimental mapping of the Los Angeles heatscape
Arfa Momin, University of California, Berkeley
Advised by Clancy Wilmott (Assistant Professor in Critical Cartography at Berkeley Centre for New Media and Department of Geography)
Heat is woven into many disciplines—climate, energy, public health, ecology—and its effects are felt globally. Yet despite (and perhaps because) of this reach, heat is often overlooked in critical geographic conversations. Heat is not simply a fixed reading on a thermometer, but something relational, emerging from encounters between atmospheres, bodies, and social circumstances. Conventional maps show where heat is, but not how it is produced, distributed and lived asymmetrically. This project asks what it would mean to make a map that reveals as heat does. Using Los Angeles as a case study, I’ll present a digital 3D cartographic tool to visualize the unevenness of heat while attempting to push the representational limits of mapping itself.
(Link to project: reimagine-heat.com)

From Mandates to Maps: Leveraging GIS and Web Mapping to Communicate Locally Relevant Climate Risks and Inform Climate Change Adaptation
Jonnell Robinson, Syracuse University
GIS-based spatial analysis and web mapping offer powerful tools for communicating climate hazards and risks to residents, planners, and policymakers. This presentation will demonstrate how we leveraged ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps to support the City of Syracuse’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment for New York State’s Climate Smart Communities Program. We used GIS to visualize climate data, historical weather events, community assets, and vulnerable people and places to aid the city’s efforts to publicly communicate locally relevant climate change risks, including increased extreme weather events, flooding, and heat. The maps reveal uneven geographies of climate risk vulnerability, such as flood-prone neighborhoods, aging infrastructure, and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and present opportunities to empower residents and inform place-based policy interventions at the local scale.

City and County of Denver’s Digital Storm Drainage Master Plan: Communicating Flood Risk through Interactive Web Mapping
Josephine Sajbel, Stantec
This presentation highlights the transformation of a 230-page stormwater master plan into a GIS platform using ArcGIS Hub and ArcGIS Experience Builder. The project combined updated modeling, GIS schema improvements, and interactive web mapping to support both engineering analysis and public education. The platform includes flood risk mapping, infrastructure improvement projects, and document access tools designed for a wide range of users. Amidst balancing technical functionality with accessibility, designing repeatable workflows, and creating user-focused maps, the SDMP aims to help the community to better understand flood risk and prioritize capital investments related to flood mitigation projects.

.fillyay() or .fillnay()? Evaluating Weather Data Gap-Filling Strategies for Operational Fire Danger Modeling
Tracy Tien, Texas A&M Forest Service
Data gaps from weather stations are inevitable and a common flare-up in fire weather modeling. This project develops a Google Cloud Platform framework that builds a historical ERA5 Land Hourly weather archive leveraging Google Earth Engine and BigQuery to gap-fill observations from weather stations. Five gap-filling methods were evaluated using the National Fire Danger Rating System python module, across a sample of weather stations varying in data completeness, climatology length, and geography. Performance was validated against fire occurrence data, and the results inform on-going enhancements to the operational fire danger products for the state of Texas.

Atlas de la Desaparición: Cartographic Experiments in Visualizing Uncertainty and Absence
Bea Abbott, University of Kentucky, department of geography
Oficina de Investigación Documental (OID)
Atlas de la Desaparición is an investigation by a multidisciplinary collective of artists and researchers whose objective is to unravel histories of enforced disappearance from the Spanish Civil War and subsequent Francoist dictatorship that converge at 'El Valle de los Caídos' — a fascist monument and mass grave located 50 km northwest of Madrid. Since 2022, this site-specific investigation has explored different methodologies for visualizing the complex dataset that corresponds to the more than 33,000 people exhumed from 632 grave sites across Spain and reburied behind the monument’s walls between 1959 and 1983. This paper shares some of the cartographic approaches our collective has experimented with in trying to attend to and visualize uncertain, erroneous, and missing geographic data.

Visualizing Conflict Landscapes: A Cartographic Approach to A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Population Vulnerability to Armed Conflict in Burkina Faso (2015–2025) Using GIS-Based Modeling.
Harriet Morkor, Quarshie University of Northern Iowa
Samuel Nketia Boateng, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
Mohammed Sanda, University of Florida.
The Central Sahel has become one of West Africa's most dynamic conflict regions, with Burkina Faso at the center of a crisis that links political instability, violent events, displacement, and disruption of basic services. This study evaluates the spatio-temporal pattern of armed conflict in Burkina Faso, quantifies population exposure to conflict-risk zones, and assesses network-based accessibility to healthcare facilities between 2015 and 2025. ACLED conflict-event data were integrated with WorldPop gridded population estimates, administrative boundaries, health-facility locations, and road network data in ArcGIS Pro. Standard deviational ellipses were used to trace conflict direction, Global Moran's I and local cluster statistics were used to test spatial dependence, Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) was used to classify conflict intensity, and network service areas were generated for 30-, 60-,and 120-minute travel-time thresholds. Results show that conflict events are spatially clustered rather than randomly distributed, with persistent hotspots across the Sahel, Nord, Centre-Nord, Est, and Centre-Est regions. The directional analysis indicates a transition from early dispersed incidents to a northward concentration and later eastward diffusion. Population overlay results show that the number of people living in high-risk zones increased from 1.44 million in 2015 to 1.87 million in 2025, while medium-risk zones held more than 8.19 million people by 2025. Accessibility results reveal important spatial inequalities: some central and western areas are linked to hospital catchments, but large rural and peripheral areas, especially in the Est and Sahel borderlands, remain weakly served. The study demonstrates the value of integrating spatial statistics, demographic exposure mapping, and network analysis to support humanitarian planning and geographically targeted health-service interventions in conflict-affected settings.

New Media Cartographies: Codes, Grammars and Poetics in Collaborative Indigenous Web Mapping
Clancy Wilmott, University of California, Berkeley
Drawing together scholarship on Indigenous cartographies with theories of spatial new media, this paper discusses the possibilities and pitfalls of web cartography in the depiction of indeterminate, land-based and relational Indigenous spaces. It examines two separate collaborative projects - Mapping Genocide with the American Indian Cultural District, in San Francisco and the Reexamining Our Past Initiative from the California State Parks - to discuss the ways in which web cartography, in its specificity as an interactive non-linear media, might extend or limit what Pearce and Louis (2008) have described as “Indigenous processual cartography” through the use of ergodic poetics, cultural politics and technological ambiguity.

A Geography of Violence: The Rapid Support Forces and A Modern Conception of Territoriality and Control
Ethan Copeland, University of Nebraska at Omaha
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), formed in the prelude and continuation of genocide in Sudan, has been infamous in the news for its displays of wanton violence, ethnocentrism, and lack of administrative capacity. Most notably, it has given rise to the pretense of alternative governance to the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). On the ground, it has continued to defy contemporary geography theory. Instead, RSF authority is produced through infrastructural metrics: checkpoints, convoy protection, detention and elimination, property seizure, and selective access to trade allow for violence itself to become a spatial device. Through satellite imagery, social media, diaspora-centric communications, humanitarian work, and survivor testimonials, the RSF case advances a 21st-century theory of armed governance, circulation, and belonging beyond classical sovereignty.

Clash of the Eagle and the Lion: Mapping the War between the U.S., Israel, and Iran
Amy Jensen, Indiana University Bloomington
This StoryMap examines the 2026 conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran through GIS mapping techniques. Using airstrike density maps and topographical analysis, the project explores how the war spread across the Middle East, which regions experienced the heaviest targeting, and the strategic limitations of a potential ground invasion of Iran. The study demonstrates the harrowing consequences of the conflict, including disruptions to oil trade, and geopolitical stability. By visualizing military activity across time and space, this project highlights the strategic complexity of modern warfare in the Middle East.

Freelance and small business cartography roundtable
Nat Case, INCase, LLC
Daniel Huffman (they/them), somethingaboutmaps.com
A perennial open-ended discussion for those interested in becoming (or growing) a cartography-based business. Daniel Huffman will share the results of his annual survey of freelance cartographers, and Nat Case will share a brief outline of ""13 things I've learned about starting out as a freelance cartographer"" and then we open the floor to questions, answers, discussion, performance art… whatever helps you make sense of the ever-changing world of the business of map-making.

Ribbon Maps: A brief talk on a lengthy format
Aaron Koelker, NYS Geospatial Services Bureau
What is a ribbon map? Are they helpful on the go? Can you tie them in a bow? This talk may or may not answer these questions. I'll start with a brief overview of a niche map format, including some past and present examples with (im)practical usage. Then I'll spend the rest of the talk running through some of my own ribbon maps I've made.

The Sticky Notes We Needed Earlier - Because Mappers Need Pep Talks Too
Rebecca Ramsey
Every GIS professional has experienced staring at a map, workflow, or project while quietly wondering, “Am I even good at this?” From newbie analysts to seasoned cartographers, self-doubt and imposter syndrome can follow even the most accomplished professionals. This presentation takes inspiration from motivational sticky notes, office posters, and small reminders that help people keep going. Through humor, relatable stories, and encouraging takeaways, attendees will leave with practical ways to build confidence, support one another, and remember that nobody becomes an expert without first making a few questionable maps along the way.

Cartotopologies: Toward a Debris Cartography
Alexis Wood, University of California, Berkeley
Cartotopologies asks how cartography might register extraction not as event, but as a spatial process whose effects endure, accumulate, and fold unevenly across a landscape. Reworking Mount Shasta’s contour lines into spatiotemporal rings (function analogously to tree rings), the project uses spatial reparameterization to redistribute uniform time through a differentiated space, rendering events as topological inscription rather than a historical point. Drawing on critical cartography, relational spatial theory, and debates on abstraction, the map treats landscape not as a stable surface to be represented, but as something continually produced through accumulation and resistance. This presentation focuses on the project’s theoretical framework and the mathematical operations that structure its form.

The world on a basketball
Andy Woodruff, Freelance cartographer
In 2024 I collaborated with cartographer-turned-NBA-analyst Kirk Goldsberry to create a globe that doubles as a real, court-ready basketball. The challenge: a standard basketball is divided into eight weirdly shaped panels, not traditional globe gores. This short presentation will explain how I figured out the right map projections to use, how we designed an appealing map on a bumpy basketball surface, and how the right salesperson can turn a nice but simple map into a collector's item. We'll also see some potential future basketball globe designs.

Human and Colloquial Scale in Digital Maps
Jia Zhang, Brennan Center for Justice and Columbia University
I started thinking more about how to understand scale when my son asked how many seconds it was until the weekend. The length of one second was a tangible thing to a child, equivalent to a tick tock sound he can make on his own. 5 minutes meant almost nothing. When tectonic plates move at the same speed as my fingernails grow, it is not slow or fast, it simply is. There is a long tradition of measuring things with ones’ own body, at arms lengths, by stride, and Smoot. How do we make use of colloquial and biological units in digital maps? In this talk I present a series of interactive maps using alternative measurements to highlight intuitive and biological understandings of scale, by football fields, Eiffel towers, giraffes, and sleeps.

A Guide to Mapping Small Joys
Jessica Breen, American University
A small joy is anything that makes your day better: a good cup of coffee, an unexpected meeting with a friend, hearing a favorite song. "A Guide to Mapping Small Joys" is a zine-based mapping project that invites participants to notice these moments of joy in their daily lives and create a personal map, or even atlas, of where small joys occur for them. Intended as an analog, affective mapping exercise to facilitate classroom conversations about place, identity, and representation, this talk walks through the zine design, the mapping activity, and what some of the collected maps look like in practice.

The K-12 Teacher Fellowship Model: Expanding Geographic Literacy and Outreach in Map Libraries
Ryan Mattke, University of Minnesota Libraries
Learn how a K-12 Summer Teacher Fellowship, launched in 2023, is enhancing the relevance of map libraries and expanding geographic literacy. This presentation details the program's development and analyzes it alongside three comparable national initiatives. These four case studies reveal key elements for success, offering a blueprint for similar outreach programs and strong justification for funding. See how a collaborative approach fosters a robust teacher-fellow community and positions map libraries as vital, intersectional hubs—bridging the gap between extensive university research resources and the practical needs of K-12 educators.

Building a Cartography Lab at an R2 University: Reflections from the JMU Map Lab
Timothy Prestby, James Madison University
Several universities at very high research (R1) institutions (e.g., Penn State, UW-Madison, University of Oregon) have cartography labs. However, such labs are not common at strong (R2) institutions. In this talk, I introduce The James Madison University (JMU) Map Lab: an R2 cartography lab that aims to advance mapmaking as a tool for communication, decision-making, and community engagement. I reflect on the opportunities and challenges of launching and sustaining the JMU Map Lab within an R2 institutional context and conclude by considering what these reflections may mean for similar institutions.

The data context gap in cartography textbooks and handbooks
Ester Scheck, TU Wien
If "numbers don’t speak for themselves," cartographers must understand the context of the data they use. Data is never neutral or objective; it is shaped by social, legal, and technological conditions. I argue for "responsible data practices"- an intentional approach that considers the context in which data is produced and its impact on communities. However, my research based on a qualitative content analysis of major cartography textbooks and handbooks points to a significant gap. These books primarily focus on the technical handling of data (e.g., data formats and classification) while overlooking data source issues and the data production context. My ongoing doctoral research aims to bridge this gap by developing methodologies to critically examine data context and inform critical map design.

Agentic mapping on the web
Kristian Ekenes, Esri
In this talk I’ll provide an overview of how you can build web mapping applications that allow end users to explore, and even create, fully interactive web maps using a natural language interface. You’ll learn how AI components and agents empower map authors, app developers, and end users of web mapping applications to be more efficient in their workflows. I’ll summarize pros and cons of using AI to create web mapping applications and review what this means for the future of web mapping and why having a solid foundation of geographic and cartographic knowledge matters more now than ever.

Collaborative Mapmaking at Audubon: From Story Through Design
Julie Rossman, National Audubon Society
Ryan Hobbs, National Audubon Society
This session offers a look into how the Enterprise GIS and Design teams at the National Audubon Society collaborate with editors, artists, and editorial leadership to produce maps from early concept through final publication for Audubon Magazine.
We'll walk through our end-to-end process: working with editors to understand the story a map needs to tell, developing an art direction that serves the content, hiring and guiding illustrators, sourcing and visualizing data layers, and navigating the messy reality of bringing it all together. We'll use a map created for a story about the ecological impacts of Russia’s war against Ukraine as our central case study.
A key theme is collaboration: how GIS sits at the intersection of data, design, editorial judgment, and artistic vision, and what it takes to make that intersection productive. We’ll close with additional examples—including maps on plastics in the ocean, poaching in Cyprus, and sage grouse habitat loss—and we’ll discuss lessons we've learned in fact-checking, data sourcing, and an honest look at what we'd do differently.

Workflow Development When Designing Maps and Data Visualizations for Print
Harman Singh, Pennsylvania State University
Fritz Kessler, Pennsylvania State University
This session explores the challenges faced when developing a design workflow for print visuals included in a book that takes a data-driven design and cartographic storytelling approach. Specifically, this session draws on a book project that pieces together point data related to the U-boat campaign's geographic operations during World War II. Topics covered during this talk will include constraints and considerations for print design, such as color, scale, and layout; designing workflows across multiple software, such as ArcGIS Pro, R, and Adobe Illustrator; and discussion around the use of small multiples, multivariate symbolism, and statistical analysis.

Hating on choropleths (but in a nicer way)
Kelsey Taylor, Stamen Design
Eric Brelsford, Stamen Design
Choropleths are one of the most common types of maps clients ask us for at Stamen. In some cases, they are a totally legitimate way to aggregate and visualize data. But, in many cases, they introduce major biases, overemphasize certain types of areas, or are tied to scales that are not appropriate for the data on the map. Cartographers often face a tradeoff between simplicity, legibility, and meaningfulness that make choropleths rank low on the list of enjoyable maps to make.
In this talk, we will focus on alternative approaches that we prefer (maps and otherwise!) and where we feel like they have been the most successful.

Critically Engaged Cartographic AI - a panel of enthusiasts, critics, and practitioners
Jim Thatcher, Oregon State University
Craig Dalton, Hofstra University
Anthony Robinson, Penn State University
Artificial Intelligence is both the technology and buzzword of the moment. Its impacts are being felt in acts as divergent as package sorting in dimly lit factories to bombing campaigns in active war zones. In each, the role between human and machine, between labor and commodity, continues to be reshaped by an all consuming capital-infused technological push. Cartography is being reshaped by these forces and, like many other areas of society, has seen a rapid and often rabid disjuncture between enthusiastic, wholesale embrace of AI and its integration into every facet of cartographic praxis and the full rejection of Cartographic AI as “slop.” This panel provides a more nuanced outlook on the matter - recognizing the inevitability of the technology, but doing so thoughtfully and with intent. Bringing together a wide spectrum of scholars and practitioners with diverse views and engagements with AI, we explore how cartographic praxis can be reshaped by thinking with AI rather than it thinking for cartographers.

How Are Static Maps Actually Made? A Workflow-Based Discussion on Cartographic Practice and Education
Yanbing Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alicia Cowart, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This Birds of a Feather session invites cartographers, educators, students to collectively unpack how static maps are created in current professional practice. The session begins with participants’ lived workflows: how they receive a mapping task, gather and clean data, choose tools, move between GIS and graphic design software, revise drafts, respond to feedback, prepare files for publication, and evaluate the final map. Through a collaborative workflow-mapping and card-sorting activity, participants will identify common stages in static map production, document where key decisions happen, and compare these stages with existing GIS&T Body of Knowledge components. Special attention will be given to tool-mediated decisions: for example, what specific steps (generalization, visual design etc.) occurs in ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, Mapshaper, Adobe Illustrator, scripting environments, or through manual visual editing. The goal is to surface forms of practical cartographic knowledge that may be underrepresented in current cartography and GIS education, and to discuss how curricula might better reflect contemporary static map production.

AI, Artistic Style, and Intellectual Property: Legal and Ethical Boundaries in Modern Cartography
Aileen Buckley, Esri
Pete Schreiber, Esri
The capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) to replicate artistic style is a hallmark of modern advances in deep learning, machine learning, and generative AI. But it also raises concerns about copying artistic style that predate AI and have long been relevant to cartographers and other artists. At the heart of this discussion is the argument that cartography = art = protectable copyright expression. Several legal principles are central to this discussion, including the idea/expression dichotomy, the protection of artistic forms, the copyrightability of fact-based works, and the copyrightability of “style.” In a world that is being scraped, ingested, and consumed by AI, and AI increasingly automates map creation, mimics styles, and arranges facts in novel ways, understanding these legal boundaries is essential for the ethical and innovative use of AI in cartography.

Cartographic Frameworks Should Inform AI Best Practices
Vanessa Knoppke-Wetzel, Esri
In our industry we should not ignore the unprecedented impact AI on the world at multiple scales, such as environmental destruction and inaccurate code, data, maps, and visualizations.
Our existing cartographic frameworks and collective expertise can inform, push, and grow the industry and our work to ensure that if AI is part of our tools, products, software, production methodology, and/or more... we know that we are doing the most to have the least negative impact.
Join my talk to learn how to start.
I also hope this talk encourages us to come together and collectively improve AI best practices over time.

GeoAI Embracing Place? Earth Embeddings and The Pitfall of Digital Placelessness
Yue Lin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Bo Zhao, University of Washington (not presenting)
Earth embeddings, learned as numerical vectors from Earth observation (EO) data, are increasingly promoted as enabling GeoAI to embrace place by representing spatial complexity in dense, multi-dimensional form. This paper questions the promise and argues that Earth embeddings embody a design paradox: their current modes can intensify what we term digital placelessness—the reduction of places to computable surfaces that sidelines relational, social, cultural, and historical dimensions of place. Empirically, we examine Google’s Satellite Embedding dataset in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, where shared terrain and built form coexist with sharply different sovereignties, regimes of exclusion, and lived realities. We show how embedding-based similarity renders cross-border places "similar" by privileging EO-visible landscape while obscuring the political and experiential asymmetries. We further argue that embeddings add a post-visual layer of abstraction relative to satellite imagery and sensor measurements, which can weaken interpretive accountability and constrain the shared representational ground often needed for community-engaged geographic inquiry. We conclude by outlining directions for re-situating Earth embeddings through boundary-setting, plural representations, and provenance-aware evaluation, and we invite geographers to rethink what it would mean for GeoAI to embrace place without collapsing place into surface, proxy, and vector similarity.

All you need are words: LLMs and the future of prompt-driven cartography
Ian Muehlenhaus, Esri
Maps used to be expensive: technically, temporally, and institutionally. With large language models, they’ve become incredibly cheap. This talk introduces “prompt cartography,” where the cartographer shifts from map maker to map director – guiding expert assistants through iterative pipelines of data, design, and critique. Rather than replacing expertise, this shift amplifies it, demanding sharper judgment, clearer intent, and new forms of authorship and collaboration. I’ll outline emerging prompt-to-map workflows, common failure modes, and what this means in everyday practice, teaching, and for the future of the field. The goal isn’t to fear inevitable change; it's to ensure today's cartographers help direct it.

Can AI Reason with Cartographic Rules? A Framework for Evaluating LLM-Based Cartographic Decision-Making
Shiyu Zhang, University of Oregon
Generative AI is increasingly being applied to cartographic tasks, yet most current approaches treat map production as a pattern-matching task, offering little insight into whether AI decision-making aligns with cartographic principles. This talk presents a framework for evaluating LLM-based cartographic decision-making. Using the International Specification for Orienteering Maps as an application domain, the study designs a baseline cartographic agent with a traceable reasoning workflow. It then examines how different ways of organizing cartographic knowledge shape reasoning behavior and failure patterns.

Antarctic Cartography: Mapping the End of the Earth at the Polar Geospatial Center
Jesse Bakker, Polar Geospatial Center, University of Minnesota
Captivated by the rugged and truly remote wilderness of Antarctica, people have long attempted to capture this stark landscape in maps. Inaccessible, ice-covered, and largely distorted on most maps, Antarctica presents unique challenges and constraints to cartographers. Here, we showcase the visualization techniques, incredible data, and historical inspiration that map makers at the Polar Geospatial Center use to bring the frozen continent into view to support vital polar science.

Wavelet-Based Texture Shading
Leland Brown, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
Texture shading is a terrain representation method that works effectively on both mountainous terrain and areas of low relief, but until now it was not as well-suited for mixed terrain types. The original algorithm enhances small features based on horizontal width but does not consider the local ruggedness of the terrain. Ideally we could decompose the terrain into features of different sizes and adjust each based on both width and height. An updated texture shading algorithm approximates this intuition using a continuous wavelet transform. This process is initially available via a free online interface. A preview window allows adjusting the parameters of the algorithm to see their effects in real time before generating the final image.

Multi-scale Shaded Relief and Surface Orientation
Patrick Kennelly, Central Oregon Community College
Gene Trantham, Independent
While terrain representations show noticeable changes when mapped at various scales, no studies to date have attempted to quantify and visualize the variations in relief shading values among scales. In this study, we vary raster extent and grid cell resolution over a fixed extent to look at changes in the orientation of surface normal vectors and the variance of relief shading values. We use multi-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) designed for cartographic display at varying scales in two ways. In the first part, four different resolutions of DEMs (1, 5, 15, and 30-meter pixels) cover the same extent and are centered on the Gore Range of Colorado. In the second part, the full extent of eight DEMs of varying resolution (1, 5, 15, 30, 90, 250, 500, and 1,000-meter pixels) are centered on the Gore Range and cover increasingly large portions of Colorado and the western United States. Our analysis visualizes and quantifies tonal variations a user experiences when zooming out on an interactive map from large to small scales.

Resampling Relief: Evaluating Elevation and Hillshade Representation on Discrete Global Grids
Emmanuel Stefanakis, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary
This study evaluates how Earth relief and terrain illumination can be represented on an ISEA3H discrete global grid system (DGGS), with emphasis on multi-resolution resampling. Using Alberta, Canada, as a testbed, we examine diverse geomorphological settings, including plains, foothills, river valleys, and mountain/alpine terrain. Elevation and hillshade products are generated across successive DGGS resolution levels and compared with equivalent representations on regular rectangular grids. The analysis assesses preservation of landform structure, shading continuity, and visual legibility during scale transitions. Results inform cartographic generalization strategies for hexagonal global grids and support more effective terrain visualization in DGGS-based mapping environments.

Mapping Alaska: New Maps of the Last Frontier
Chaney Swiney, Benchmark Maps/East View Geospatial
Earlier this year, Benchmark Maps released two new Alaskan titles: the 3rd edition of our Alaska Road & Recreation Atlas and a brand new folded Alaska Recreation Map. With enhanced terrain representation and updated land ownership data, both products showcase a new-and-improved aesthetic. We’ll take a tour through the atlas and show how it’s changed over its first decade, poring over the maps and highlighting the cartography that showcases these spectacular landscapes. Plus, we’ll get into the details of building the folded map, a companion product that relies heavily on the foundation laid by the atlas.

How Scientists Map Ice: A Cartographic Content Analysis of Glacier Changes in Peer-Reviewed Literature
Jasper Zhou, University of Oregon
Glacier change maps appear in peer-reviewed journals every year, yet no one has systematically asked whether those maps actually communicate well. This study applies quantitative content analysis to a corpus of glacier retreat maps published between 2000 and 2025, coding for symbology, color, temporal encoding, and science communication quality. The goal is to characterize how glaciologists currently map retreat, trace how design conventions have shifted over time, and identify where scientific glacier cartography falls short of what we know about effective climate visualization.

Law, Organizing, and Cartography
Lucy Roberts-Widdison, Harriet Tubman Fellow, Coalition for Property Tax Justice
Modern spatial data practices create, perpetuate, and exacerbate racial differences in housing outcomes. For example, in the majority-Black city of Detroit, 1 in 4 of the lowest value homes have been illegally foreclosed since 2009 because of spatial interpolation methods that ignore the majority of residential sales. In Milwaukee, utility and zoning tickets similarly result in grim property foreclosure rates. This presentation explores the role cartographers can play in illuminating and dismantling racist policies, drawing on the Institute for Law and Organizing’s decade of community organizing work in the City of Detroit and emerging work in Milwaukee.

Building a document framework to support ethics in cartography
Nat Case, INCase, LLC
Chelsea Nestel, University of Oregon
Aileen Buckley, ESRI
The ICA Commission on Ethics in Cartography has been running a series of workshops this summer exploring the elements and framing of ethical codes that cartographers work with, especially in map-centered organizations. The plan is to offer (1) a library of codes of ethics or conduct, statements of principles, or other documents that organize ethical guidelines, (2) a structured list of topics that are already commonly raised, or should be raised, and (3) the range of types of documents and document structures and how they address the needs of their constituents. We'll outline what we've come up with so far and leave time for group feedback.

Fractured Epistemologies/Cartographies of Disinformation
Chelsea Nestel, University of Oregon
Carolyn Fish
Kelly Bonnville-Sexton
Sarah Haedrich
Joy Ihuka
Mason Leavitt
Lauren Walker
Jasper Zhou
What’s real anyway? Does it seem like somehow it doesn’t matter anymore? Although we have always operated within and benefited from fractured epistemologies (knowledge systems), the world feels different now. A global pandemic, dis/misinformation, AI, and social media exploit that we hold different truths, approach the world from different perspectives, and make different choices. Thus, the connection of maps to reality has never been more unclear. This new world has cartographers in an identity crisis, because cartography has focused on making maps that work. This research agenda presents challenges and opportunities resulting from the current epistemic fracturing.

Map Meets Meme: Visualizing Geographic Ignorance in Trump-Era Cartographic Satire
Raechel Portelli, University of Illinois
Antonio Smith, Antonio Antoine Cartography
What happens when "Map meets Meme" in today's U.S. political climate? I will present the results of a study on internet memes that pair maps with caricatures of U.S. President Donald Trump , examining how these juxtapositions render geographic ignorance visible. I argue that these memes highlight Trump's own geopolitical ignorance, but also of geographic ignorance of Americans more broadly. Combining concepts of viral maps (Robinson 2019) and strategic ignorance as a tool of the powerful (McGoey 2012). I conclude that these memes blur the distinction between personal and structural ignorance.

Maps as a Site of Reproductive Justice
Abby Whelan, Syracuse University
Maps and map-based dashboards have proliferated since the United States Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which removed federal protections for the right to abortion. In this presentation, I examine these maps as sites of reproductive injustice by illustrating the multi-scalar and intersecting impacts of uneven reproductive healthcare access on the experiences of birthing people and their right to have or not have a child. More specifically, I use a content analysis to analyze a corpus of state and national maps and map-based dashboards. I unpack their data and design decisions that reinforce the political, racial, and economic forces which constrain the choices available to birthing people. I conclude by arguing for maps as sites for reproductive justice and offer best practices for future maps of reproductive experiences.

I am not sure we are ever quite sufficiently surprised at our capacity to read maps.
Mark Denil, sui generis
I am not sure we are ever quite sufficiently surprised at our capacity to read maps. This capacity is astonishing, because a map is so completely and utterly artificial, so contrived, so distinct and detached from any direct relationship with that which it supposedly depicts, as to be, save for learned, cultural conventions, without connection to the world, and certainly without intrinsic meaning. Our understanding of these learned, cultural conventions rest upon maps we have seen, and is actuated by means of aesthetic value judgments we make on the artifact in hand—before we can even begin to read the map.

How to Map with Context: A Collaborative Exploration for Mapmakers
Ester Scheck, TU Wien
Meghan Kelly, Syracuse University

Just as every map is based on the mapmaker’s conscious and unconscious decisions, every dataset – the basis of any map – is shaped by its production context. Understanding this context is essential for data analysis and visualization because data is never neutral or objective. So, what can it look like to research and reflect on the dataset production context as part of the map-making workflow? In this co-creation session, we will discuss and explore approaches to doing so by focusing on the perspectives of the participants, of people making maps. Through interactive and creative methods, we will brainstorm relevant aspects and prototype tools that focus on understanding and incorporating the context of data production into the map-making workflow. The session will foster exchange and learning from each other to strengthen responsible and ethical data practices in cartography. The work will be documented, and the results will – in aggregated and anonymized form – contribute to Ester Scheck’s doctoral research.

The Joy of Color
Elaine Guidero
Jim Thatcher, Oregon State University
Have we hit the age of quiet luxury cartography? Maps praised as “tasteful” look like the Succession wardrobe. Subdued neutral tones code as sophistication and elegance in fashion and seemingly now cartography. Does Design-with-a-capital-D mean avoiding bold hues and high saturation? Color is an essential part of the zeitgeist and has deep ties to emotion and language—but perhaps we use these to limit ourselves. I will tease apart some of these connections, with an eye to the ways class and race are contextualized in design, and show the joy in exploring a wider color palette.

Creating giant map images for the National Geographic Museum of Exploration
Sam Guilford, National Geographic Society
As part of the redesign of the new National Geographic Museum of Exploration, the NGS Geography & Mapping team created many maps for use in different contexts throughout the space. In this talk, I’ll discuss the ideation, research, and production of some wall-sized satellite maps I created for an education exhibit. The exhibit illustrates geographic concepts such as place, pattern, and scale, and my aim was to create accompanying map graphics that would be thematically illustrative and visually compelling. Curating and pulling together a museum is a dynamic and iterative process, and I’ll show some of the steps that led to the pieces selected for the final exhibit. Not everything makes it through!

Cartographic Interpretation of a Different Kind: Applying Museum Principles to Map Design
Eric Johnson, Library of Virginia/Compass & Quill
Museum interpretation as a field is concerned with the art and science of connecting visitors to places and collections. There are striking resonances between the worlds of cartographic design and museum interpretation. Both focus on taking complex information and communicating it meaningfully to audiences in creative and compelling ways. Interpretation experts advance a series of formal professional principles—e.g. "Any interpretation [map] that does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something within the personality or experience of the visitor [viewer] will be sterile.” In this session we will explore how these interpretive principles can help you frame afresh your approaches to your own cartographic work.

It’s Alive! Using Art & Design to Spark Ideas for More Interesting Map Layouts
Scott Schiller, Maps by Scott, Milwaukee
A map has a variety of elements, but the layout should be greater than the sum of its parts. The best maps don’t just visualize data, they grab our attention, communicate a story, and evoke an emotion. Once you can identify what makes a map layout more meaningful, you can be intentional about designing the overall composition, and bring vitality to your layout. I will share ideas on how to activate your creativity, such as type, color, balance, space and graphics. If you’re curious how to energize your map layouts, these tips can help!

Animated Maps 101: How we use maps in motion to inform 8 million subscribers on YouTube
Ryan Shields, Newpress
Every month, millions of people come to YouTube to learn from four independent journalists about sports, geopolitics, OSINT investigations, and pop culture. Maps and charts are often at the center of those stories. Here's a look behind the scenes at the tools and techniques our team of self-taught mappers use to create Emmy Award-winning maps that captivate millions.

A GeoAI Framework for Predictive Risk Monitoring of Electrical Substations and Energy Infrastructure
Olalekan Alamoh, Georgia State University
This presentation introduces a geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) framework designed to support predictive monitoring of electrical substations and critical energy infrastructure. The approach integrates satellite imagery, environmental data, and spatial analysis to identify risks such as flooding, extreme heat, and vegetation encroachment before failures occur. By combining multiple data sources into a unified system, the framework enables proactive decision-making and enhances infrastructure resilience. The presentation will highlight system design, data integration, and visualization through an interactive dashboard, demonstrating how GeoAI can transform infrastructure management from reactive response to early risk detection.

Maps going viral: learnings across public health cartography
Eric Brelsford, Stamen Design
Kelsey Taylor, Stamen Design
Stamen has collaborated with several universities and NGOs in recent years on health-related cartography projects, including WastewaterSCAN, the UCSF Health Atlas, the Duke SEED Atlas, and more. By engaging directly with epidemiologists on these projects, we have had the freedom to explore new concepts and ideas with the confidence that experts will ensure we are telling the right stories and portraying ongoing outbreaks accurately.
Through these examples, this talk will focus on patterns in the health mapping space, how it differs from other types of cartography that we work on at Stamen, and what we can apply to future public health-related projects.

MadTrails: A public land management and trail accessibility tool
Susannah C. Cox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Alton L. Hipps, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Natalie Correa, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Jonathan K. Nelson, University of Wisconsin–Madison
We discuss the tool MadTrails, a multi-application suite built on the ESRI ArcGIS Online environment for the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum. Built alongside community stakeholders, MadTrails allows for online reporting of maintenance and access issues by Arboretum volunteers and the public to aid in better management of the arboretum space and increased access to communities with mobility difficulties. Additionally, we include opportunities for direct mapping of accessibility issues. In this talk, we will discuss the functionalities of MadTrails, the stakeholder engagement process, initial evaluation findings, and future steps for the application.

Communicating Healthcare Affordability Through Maps: A Visual Analytics Framework Using NHIS and MEPS Data
Sandipta Khare, Claremont Graduate University, Ph.D. Student, Information Systems and Technology
Alexis Parker, Claremont Graduate University
Prof. Hengwei Zhang, Claremont Graduate University
Healthcare affordability can be understood through both barriers to obtaining care and financial burden after receiving care. This study uses two national public-use survey datasets, the 2023 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2023 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), to examine these related dimensions. NHIS is used to analyze reported cost-related barriers to mental health counseling and therapy, while MEPS is used to examine annual healthcare expenditure burden. Through regional mapping, visual analytics, and uncertainty-aware cartographic design, the project demonstrates how public-use health survey data can be used to communicate healthcare affordability patterns responsibly while acknowledging geographic limitations.

Network Ontologies for Disaster Management Tools: A Review of Cartographic Literature
David Retchless, Texas A&M University at Galveston
Carolyn Fish, University of Oregon
Jim Thatcher, Oregon State University
Chad Giusti, Oregon State University
Conor Progin, Oregon State University
Courtney Thatcher
We review cartographic literature for the network ontologies of disaster management tools, identifying gaps and opportunities. Natural disasters disrupt flows of people, energy, information, and other resources that are essential to modern systems. Cartographic tools for disaster management therefore frequently model and map these flows and associated networks. Understanding the network ontologies (implicit or explicit) that undergird these tools is essential to identifying their capacities and limitations. Differences in what counts as a node or edge – what features, with what dimensionality and level of attribution – can be the difference between delivering life-saving insights into network function and missing key vulnerabilities.

A Cartographic Analysis of Renewable Energy Maps
Sarah Haedrich, University of Oregon
How is the development of renewable energy imagined? Where are renewable energy facilities actually located, and how are those decisions made? What role do maps play in these development processes? In this presentation, I will explore these questions through a case study of utility-scale solar and wind development in Oregon. I will present findings from a content analysis of maps depicting solar and wind development, followed by preliminary findings from interviews with renewable energy development stakeholders.

FERNS Pesticide Notification Web Map Development
Joanna Merson, University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab
Erik Steiner, University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab
Mason Leavitt, Beyond Toxics
Michal Klopotowski, University of Oregon InfoGraphics Lab
Oregon has one of the nation's most comprehensive public notification systems for planned pesticide applications on forestlands. However, notifications are available as individual PDFs, making access and geographic exploration difficult. In collaboration with Beyond Toxics, an environmental justice nonprofit based in OR, we developed an interactive map that makes pesticide notifications (2014-2024) easier to explore. The presentation focuses on design choices that improve access through interactive mapping, filters, and original source links while communicating data limitations. Public response has been mixed: supporters praise the map for increasing transparency and public access to environmental information,

Hidden Hybrids in the Huayhuash: Public/Private Property Mapping in Perú
Timothy Norris, University of Miami
In 2002 the Cordilleras Huayhuash and Raura of the central Peruvian Andes were designated as the Zona Reservada Cordillera Huayhuash (ZRCH). Shortly after this state led initiative, local communities leveraged novel private conservation frameworks to have their lands recognized as private conservation areas (PCAs). This hybrid public/private conservation strategy is remarkably successful to date. I tell a cartographic story of these efforts and argue that the benefits of the PCAs are hidden from the state and that the benefits of the ZRCH are hidden from the communities. These hidden benefits present an opportunity in which maps can reveal these emergent hybrid conceptions of property and the impact they have on the socionatural landscape.

Mapping the Natlas: Cartography for Conservation in Vermont
Bernadette Osborn, Middlebury College
As a geospatial intern with The Nature Conservancy in Vermont, I designed 16 hiking maps for the "Natlas," a collection of Natural Area maps built to serve hikers, hunters, stewardship staff, and TNC as a whole. Using Google Earth Engine, ArcGIS, QGIS, and Adobe Illustrator, I created maps that layer natural communities, topography, and hydrology into clear, field-ready references. This talk walks through my workflow, from data processing to final design, and the choices made to balance public accessibility with the technical needs of land stewards. I'll share lessons learned building multi-use conservation maps for a diverse, non-cartographer audience.

Natural areas cartography: If you like it, should you put a ring on it?
Jovian Sackett, Southern Environmental Law Center
While natural areas, like wetlands, rarely possess crisp boundaries, legal determinations often require them. Wetlands are complex and dynamic systems, regulated to varying degrees, making them specifically challenging to represent. Cartography is a valuable communications tool for environmental advocacy and educational applications, but a critical one for informing decision makers like judges, legislators and environmental agency leaders on jurisdictional matters about wetlands areas. Cartographers must author maps that respect data limitations, without leaving readers confused or misled. The balance lies somewhere between the unmistakable starkness of a bold, singular line and the indecipherable haze of a gradient, where clarity and complexity meet.

GeoTrivia! Answer questions about global and cartographic factoids, Milwaukee landmarks, and NACIS lore. Whether you’re a trivia buff or just in it for the laughs, bring your knowledge, your curiosity, and your competitive spirit!

There is no advance sign-up. Just sit in teams of 4-6, come up with a team name, and be sure to recruit at least one new attendee to your team!