ASH3002y Reading Assignment
February 3, 1999

 The Atlantic Context

For this class, we'll be thinking about maps and charts, and about the impact of the physical environment on the experience of the European colonists.  For this class, look at some of the maps in the following collections, and come prepared to talk about what you've seen.

Also, choose one map that you find particularly illuminating, and place a link to it on your webpage.  Be prepared to show it to the class, and to explain why you find it interesting.  (You may also choose two different maps which you can compare and contrast.)  Feel free to cross periods and/or national boundaries.  You might, for example, want to compare a seventeenth-century map with a modern one, and consider what the cartographer got right (and what he got wrong).

Here are some collections that you might want to explore:

The following sites have rich collections of older maps:

• Professor McCaughey's on-line atlas: http://bc.barnard.columbia.edu/~rmccaugh/maritime/atlas.htm
• Virtual Museum of New France Maps Collection:  http://www.mvnf.muse.digital.ca/reper/r-car-en.htm   (includes useful notes)
• University of Georgia Map Collection:  http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/maps.html
• University of Texas Map Collection: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection/Map_collection.html
• SUNY Stony Brook Map Collection:  http://www.sunysb.edu/library/ldmaps.htm   (This site includes a collection of maps of New York.)

These modern-day maps can offer us insight into the geography, climate, flora and fauna of the region.  Note that many of the maps are very large files that load very slowly.

• Ocean Remote Sensing from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory: http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/.   You never expected to go here, but this site includes numerous useful maps, including a color landform atlas of the United States.  Note that there are multiple maps for each state, providing a wide range of information. 
• National Climatic Data Center:  http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/  Includes satellite images and temperature data.
• http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/psguide/satellite/goesbrowse/nheast1.gif
  satellite image of northern hemisphere/Eastern US
• http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/entry.pl
  New York City Temperature
• Chesapeake Bay Watershed:   http://www.chesapeakebay.net/wshed/
• Chesapeake Bay Basin-wide Information On-Line Service: http://web.gmu.edu/bios/
• Information on Chesapeake fisheries:  http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/
• On estuaries:  http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/foundryframe.html
• Wind http://www.windpower.dk/tour/wres/index.htm