Designing a New Visitor Map of
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Tom Patterson Senior Cartographer US National Park Service tom_patterson@nps.gov The brochure for Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, one of the premier glacier parks in the US, is undergoing a redesign that will include new maps. The maps will serve multiple purposes, including orienting visitors to the park, depicting terrestrial and undersea ecosystems, and explaining glacial phenomenon. The primary mapping themes are glacial retreat and ecological succession - the establishment of Glacier Bay as a protected area in 1925 was for studying these and other natural processes. Since 1794 when British explorer George Vancouver visited the area, glaciers have retreated 65 miles up Glacier Bay and now exist tenuously only in the harsh uppermost fjords. Luxurious temperate rainforest has colonized the lower reaches of the bay. Four hundred years ago Hoonah Tlingit Indians inhabited lower Glacier Bay before advancing ice associated with the Little Ice Age forced them out - they still regard Glacier Bay as their ancestral home. As if these changes were not enough, land in deglaciated areas is now rising at a rate of one inch a year, reconfiguring coastlines; braided drainages are in constant flux; and, glacial silt is filling estuaries. A landslide triggered a tsunami in 1958 that scoured trees from a mountain 1,700 feet above sea level, the highest wave ever recorded. I will discuss the challenge of mapping this changing and diverse information for a park that is slightly smaller than Connecticut on a modest-sized sheet of paper. The new brochure will serve a most uncommon audience. Approximately ninety five percent of visitors to Glacier Bay arrive on cruise ships, never set foot ashore, and many are older - thus, large map type is a design imperative. All passengers arriving in Glacier Bay receive the National Park Service (NPS) brochure, which is an essential reference as they listen to park rangers deliver a day-long running narrative over the public address system of the ship (the cruise ship companies pay the NPS for this service). Because the weather at Glacier Bay is often inclement, and the cost of an Alaskan cruise is always high, the brochure and ranger narrative helps to assuage otherwise disappointed passengers on those occasions when visibility is poor. To show the park in a more engaging and accessible way to visitors, the new brochure tightly integrates maps, text, photographs, and illustrations. |
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Last Update:
Friday, 26-Oct-2007 16:02:26 EDT
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