It makes sense that a mapping app for the Apple Vision Pro would evoke Boston’s Mapparium. Using that virtual space to display cartograms, which is what Worldmapper VR does, is not something I would have expected. Does a virtual space designed to eliminate map distortion make a difference when presenting the distortions of a cartogram? (Would cartograms work on a globe?)
‘Geospatial Trust Is Hard to Win and Terrifyingly Easy to Lose’
Ed Parsons, who used to work at Google, has some words about the Google Earth AI image generation debacle. “Veterans of the Geo organization understood an unwritten rule that took decades to build: Geospatial trust is hard to win and terrifyingly easy to lose. Google Earth is relied upon by human rights investigators, journalists, emergency responders, and courts of law as a baseline truth layer of our planet. Once you train the public to accept that the satellite view can be whimsically altered by typing a prompt about a ‘lakeside cabin’ or a ‘futuristic metropolis’, you destroy the integrity of the platform. If anything on the screen can be AI-generated, then nothing on the screen can be trusted.”
Previously: Google Earth Goes Nano Bananas (which has been updated a few times since first publication).
Google Earth Goes Nano Bananas
It’s been possible to use 3D models in Google Earth for decades. But Google’s announcement yesterday its AI image generation model, Nano Banana 2, can be used to create custom images and 3D rendering inside Google Earth is getting some pushback, and not necessarily just because it’s AI.
Henk van Ess is concerned that realistic AI-generated images in the context of Google’s satellite imagery layer will be weaponized in a way that undermines our ability to determine the truth.
Google spent twenty years building the reference the world checks against. Today it added a button that makes things up. […]
Google’s own description of the “fun feature” is that Nano Banana “creates concepts grounded in the real world.”
Grounded in the real world means the invented thing is welded to genuine coordinates, drawn on genuine imagery, often in the same colours and the same light and at the same angle as the picture beside it. […]
A government official wants a strike to look bigger than it was. A faction wants a hospital to look flattened, or intact, depending which one is holding it this week. A troll wants forty thousand reposts before lunch.
This morning all three needed a screenshot, a second browser tab and a little patience. Tonight they need a sentence.
Van Ess’s point is that while it has always been possible to falsify satellite imagery, it just got a lot easier. He also discovered that Google’s safeguards against creating images on harmful topics did not prevent him from doing so.
Update: 404 Media: “Google sent 404 Media a statement saying it was ‘rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails.’”
Update #2: Google’s blog post has been updated:
We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth for a reliable view of the world. We’ve seen geospatial professionals using this feature for a range of useful purposes, however we’ve also seen people sharing screenshots of generated imagery that appear to violate our policies. So we’re rolling back this feature in Google Earth while we work on implementing stronger guardrails. It’s important to note that generated images didn’t appear in the main Google Earth experience for others to see and were watermarked as AI generated.
Update #3: Engadget coverage.
Update #4, 3 Aug: See also BBC News coverage, in which BBC Verify tested Google’s AI checkers against the AI-generated Google Earth images and discovered that “it was possible to circumnavigate these checks and trick Gemini into saying these fake Google Earth images are real. Tests using external AI detection tools also in some cases failed to identify the Google Earth AI-content.”
Mislabelled, Misplaced and Misshaped
The Guardian: “A US government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a state department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attenders who took screenshots and posted them online.” Not only were the countries mislabelled, they were misplaced and misshaped; as Wonkette puts it: “They’re all shaped wrong, and they’re also wrong in all the other ways of geographical wrongness.” At least the outline of Africa was okay. Not that AI is required to make a map so perfectly wrong, but it appears to have been used in this case.
New Gravity Visualization of the Earth
NASA has released a new 3D model of the Earth’s gravitational field. “The geoid is an equipotential surface that can be thought of as the shape an ocean surface would take due to the Earth’s gravity field. The geoid height ranges from +85 m (Iceland) to −106 m (southern India). The geoid height visualized here comes from the gravity field model GOCO06s, a satellite-only global gravity field model computed by the GOCO (Gravity Observation Combination) project. It is based on over a billion observations acquired over 15 years from 19 satellites. These satellites include NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and ESA’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE).” At less than 200 metres difference, the difference is “not discernible” at a planetary scale, so they have a version where height is exaggerated by a factor of 10,000. [Wired]
Online Maps Roundup: July 2026
Google Maps users in New Zealand will get a voice that “speaks English with a Kiwi accent while accurately pronouncing te reo Māori (the Māori language) place names.”
Street View imagery has been refreshed in Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
TechCrunch reports on the restrictions Apple is placing on upcoming ads in Apple Maps (previously). Beyond the usual panoply of sensitive, deceptive or illegal categories, Apple is banning ads for home services—locksmiths, plumbers, general contractors etc. Oliver Roick thinks he knows why:
If ads must appear on Apple Maps, they should be limited to businesses that operate from a shop or office I can physically visit. It avoids cluttering the map and is the right choice for user experience. If I’m looking for a plumber to fix a leak in my house, I won’t use a maps application; I’ll use a search engine. I need the plumber to come to my house; where they are and how I can get there isn’t relevant.
Considering that scammy locksmith ads on Google Maps have been a thing for years, I’m not remotely surprised that Apple’s taking this step.
Low-Earth-Orbit Satellites as GPS Alternative
Ars Technica on plans by Xona Space Systems to launch a constellation of low-Earth-orbit navigation satellites. Compared with GPS, the satellites would be much more resistent to interference because their signals would be 100 times stronger; on the other hand, the system needs 258 satellites to achieve full coverage, not 24, and low-Earth orbit is getting a bit crowded.
Previously: ESA Considering Low-Orbit Satellites to Improve Galileo System.
Skin Maps
A members-only exhibition at the Royal Geographic Society, Skin Maps: Semi-Permeable Cartography, features “collages and reworkings of historic maps” by artist Steph Morris. From Morris’s website:
The new collages by Steph on display arose from an intimate study of historic maps, many from the Royal Geographical Society collections, including seventeenth-century vellum portolan charts and historic atlases. They provided both material and inspiration. Handling maps hand-drawn on calf skin led him to consider the similarities between these depictions of landmasses and seas and the bodies of mammals, especially humans, with their liquids and solids, entry and exit points, contours and incursions; it seemed as if the cartographers had explored those similarities too. Many of the historic atlases he examined also contain illustrations of battles on land and sea, reminders of conflict and bloodshed which felt far from historic. The critical bodily health of the world’s lands and seas was also hard to ignore.
His process involved exploring anagrams, negatives/positives, shadows, inversions and reflections and the simple syntax of collage: what happens when you place disparate things alongside each other to create a new grammar. As well as maps from previous centuries, this frequently involved material such as cookbooks and gardening manuals from previous decades.
Non-members take heart: guided tours of the exhibition, open to the public, take place on 28 July (i.e., tomorrow) and 11 August (free, registration required). Also, Morris is holding a collage-map art workshop on 31 July (free, registration). And you can see highlights of the exhibition at Morris’s Instagram account (see above).
Skin Maps opened on 12 June and closes 16 August 2026. [Katie Parker]
Gatekeepers, Luddites, Haters and AI-Generated Maps
I’m opposed to generative AI and all its works. According to some leading names in the cartographic community, that makes me a gatekeeper, a Luddite, and an irrational AI hater.
So, generative AI has come to cartography. The ICA’s Commission on Map Design has been posting examples of maps produced using generative AI tools, and there’s a website highlighting the ways you can use ChatGPT to generate maps using natural language prompts. The proponents of this stuff have been making some fairly inflammatory statements in its defence, such that I can only imagine they’ve been getting some grief about using it and are pushing back against it. Hence the stuff about gatekeepers, Luddites and haters. These are epithets I’ve seen thrown around before by pro-AI advocates in other fields where the use of generative AI has proven even more controversial. They’re not new. They’re also not worth taking seriously.
Continue reading “Gatekeepers, Luddites, Haters and AI-Generated Maps”Mapping Fungal Networks
A new interactive map predicts the density and extent of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks, which exist in symbiosis with land plants. The estimate is based on soil samples and data from previous studies, fed through machine learning models. The extent of the networks comes to something like 110 quadrillion kilometres of hyphae (equivalent to roughly half the distance to most globular clusters). More here; via Wired ( News+).
Maps and Watches
I recently fell down the mechanical watch rabbit hole, and in doing so inadvertently discovered that maps and watches have a long history with each other. It’s a relationship that started long before smart watches brought detailed maps and turn-by-turn directions to our wrists. In this post I’ll explore some of the ways that mechanical, quartz and digital watches have incorporated maps into their interfaces, or turned themselves into mapping and navigation tools, without ever connecting to a GPS satellite or loading Google Maps. It’s old school, but the way a paper map is old school, which is to say: objectively capable of doing fewer things, but still not nothing, and in some cases quite impressive given the tech involved.
What follows is a roundup of the kinds of watches that have something to do something with maps. I’ll proceed very, very roughly from least to most expensive—the cheapest watches running somewhere around $30, the most expensive rather eye-wateringly more than that—with a couple of representative examples from each category. This won’t be comprehensive or exhaustive; obsessive watch nerds will no doubt be able to come up with a lot more examples.
Continue reading “Maps and Watches”Mapping with Fish Guts
A study of the diet of chinook salmon in the Salish Sea has enabled researchers to create a map of the availability of their forage species. The Tyee:
Instead of scientists trawling to try to catch small and agile forage fish themselves, they’ve partnered with local anglers like Hackinen who are catching the salmon that are eating the small fish.
The Salish Sea is the inland sea between Vancouver Island, mainland British Columbia and Washington state. Its forage fish include Pacific herring, Pacific sand lance, northern anchovy, lantern fish and tiny shrimp and crustaceans.
To support the study, known as the Adult Salmon Diet Program, local anglers recorded data about their daily chinook and coho catches before sending scientists the fish’s guts.
Using fish guts to make a map.
Satellite Imagery of the Venezuelan Earthquakes
Wired: “Satellite technology is being used to streamline rescue efforts in Venezuela following the two earthquakes that struck on June 24. Space agencies have shared images with emergency authorities and the Venezuelan government that not only reveal the magnitude of the disaster but also allow response teams to identify where to focus their efforts—and the challenges on the ground.”
Geofence Warrants Constitute a Search, Says U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled on the constitutionality of geofence warrants, SCOTUSblog reports. “The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that when law enforcement officials used a ‘geofence warrant’—a warrant that instructed Google to provide location data for cellphone users who were near a particular place during a specific time period—to obtain evidence used to convict a Virginia man of a 2019 bank robbery, they conducted a ‘search’ for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.” More on the tech side of this from John Gruber. Because Google stopped storing users’ location data in 2024 (Apple never collected such data), they ca no longer respond to geofence warrants in any event. But that doesn’t mean the question will always be moot in the future.
Previously: The Constitutionality of Geofence Warrants Is Before the U.S. Supreme Court Today.
The American Atlas
Scans from a 1776 atlas of the Americas, published in London as the American revolution was getting under way, have been posted by JSTOR. The story from JSTOR Daily:
In the summer of 1775, shortly after George Washington took charge of the newly formed Continental Army in Boston, a small advertisement appeared in the London newspapers, announcing the publication of The American Atlas: Or, A Geographical Description of the Whole Continent of America. The volume—which bore the name of the late Thomas Jefferys, who had held the title of Geographer to the King—promised a view of the continent’s “several Regions, Countries, States, and Islands, and chiefly the BRITISH COLONIES.”
The atlas was designed to capitalize on public interest in the “rebellion,” as King George III would call it in an August 1775 proclamation. Through the war, the well-to-do English reader with two pounds, twelve shilling and six pence to spare could follow news from this faraway land across a series of maps. (In editions published in subsequent years, the maps even included descriptions of Britain’s tactical victories, such as at the Battle of Valcour Island in Lake Champlain.)
Two hundred and fifty years later, the modern reader can do the same, for free, thanks to a larger edition of the atlas, dated 1776, shared via JSTOR by the Leighton Library and the University of Stirling. As geographer Rita Ann Gardiner wrote for the Royal Geographical Society, this was the extent of “the knowledge of the topography of the New World available to London mapmakers in 1776.”