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.

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.

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.

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.