GeoGarage blog

Friday, May 12, 2017

Canada CHS update in the GeoGarage platform

54 nautical raster charts updated

'Discovery' treasure hunter may have found Columbus’s anchor using a map from space

From Newsweek by Abigail Jones

The next sentence you are about to read might sound like a movie idea conjured up from the depths of oddball film star Nicolas Cage’s psyche: Professional treasure hunter, armed with a map from outer space, sets out to unearth hundreds of shipwrecks around the world—and finds a centuries-old artifact that just might be Christopher Columbus’s anchor.
Real life beat you to it, Mr. Cage: This actually happened.
That treasure hunter is Darrell Miklos, and a new Discovery docu-series, Cooper’s Treasure, has been following him as he searches for underwater treasure, guided by the ghost of his dear friend, the late NASA astronaut Gordon “Gordo” Cooper.

This is a picture of one of the maps used during the Discovery Channel exploration. It has been blurred by the network to keep part of the location a secret

Turks and Caicos islands in the GeoGarage platform

The maps (two of which are pictured) were kept a secret for almost 40 years before Gordon decided to share them with Miklos

In the 1960s, Cooper was one of NASA’s original space pioneers—the youngest of the “Original Seven” astronauts, the first to sleep in space, and the last American to make a solo trip to space.
On one of his missions, Cooper was using long-range detection equipment to search for nuclear sites when he claimed he noticed a series of anomalies—dark patches that showed up on photos he took of Earth.
He believed they were shipwrecks.
He spent decades tracking the coordinates on his space map against known shipwreck sites.
Cooper died in 2004, but not before bestowing hundreds of documents upon his longtime friend, Miklos, who set off with Discovery cameras in tow to find out if that map from space would lead to buried treasure.
It did.

Two days ago, Discovery leaked a 30-second clip of an upcoming episode with an extraordinary reveal: Miklos and his crew believe they may have found an anchor that belonged to one of Columbus’s ships that sailed between Spain and the New World.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: an early 1500s anchor. I knew in my mind that we were onto something so historically significant, just by the first line of site,” Miklos tells Newsweek in his first interview about the discovery.
“A lot of four-letter words came out of my mouth. I was shaking… And the beauty of [the anchor] laying there. It looked so elegant and ladylike to me. It seemed so fragile. There was something tender about that anchor.”

It sounds crazy... But this is a treasure map from space | Cooper's treasure

Miklos and his crew were searching off the coast of Turks and Caicos when they discovered the 1,200- to 1,500-pound bower anchor resting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
They quickly set out to verify their discovery. Miklos says the size of the anchor and details about its shape and design line up with other ships from the Columbus era.
“If you think of the early Colonial period, there was only one group of people out there: Columbus, the Pinzon brothers, and the Columbus fleet,” he says.
Miklos also thinks the anchor met a violent end—the crown was bent and the anchor ring was broken, suggesting it was detached from its ship during a storm.
(He tells the story of a ship that Martin Alonso Pinzon, one of the Pinzon brothers who voyaged with Columbus, supposedly tried salvaging along that very route in the early 1500s.)
“The importance of the anchor…is its age and nationality,” says Jim Sinclair, a consulting archaeologist on the show.
“The anchor has all of the attributes or characteristics that early period Spanish ships of exploration carried. While it is impossible to say this is from any particular ship, it remains a tantalizing clue and a possible link to Columbus and the Pinzon brothers.”

The anchor discovered off the Turks and Caicos Islands

("Cooper's Treasure"/Discovery Communications)

Now, Miklos is focused on proving the provenance of his anchor.
“They didn’t build these things with stamps on them that say, ‘Built by Columbus,’” he says.
“We’re still assessing the area to see if we can find other wreckage, and the more you find from that period, the more substantial evidence you have. But everything we’ve seen thus far, I truly believe the anchor comes from one of the ships in Columbus’s fleet.”
He’s already found pottery shards believed to be an olive jar painted with indigo paint and a Majorcan pot, both of Spanish origin, that can be used to date the wreck to the Columbus era.
Several iron and bronze spikes found nearby also help date the materials to Columbus-era ships. This summer, Miklos heads back to Turks and Caicos to see what else he can find in that vast underwater cemetery.
“If we continue our search along that trail, I believe we stand a very good chance of finding shipwreck material related to that anchor,” he says.
“That’s what we’re hoping for: something momentous. That’s the point of finding anchors, they’re like underwater arrows, pointing in the direction of that lost ship.”

Miklos's father, Roger, also is a treasure hunter, and in the early 1980s he claimed he’d found the Pinta, one of the three ships in Columbus’s first voyage.
But the discovery, near the Bahamas, was controversial.
Even his own son now doubts it.
“ I do believe that the wreckage and material he found probably comes from that same era. I won’t say it is the Pinta—I don't believe that it is,” Darrell says.
“I don’t want to follow my dad’s footsteps. I want to make a substantive discovery done in my own way—a proper way, utilizing scientific methodologies everyone can respect. This is not ‘Miklos the Sequel.’ This is ‘Cooper’s Treasure.’ It’s me on a quest to find what it is Gordon sent me out there for.”

Columbus first voyage

Miklos was a boy when he started hanging out with Cooper, and over time they developed a close friendship (and mentorship), despite their 36-year age difference.
“I remember the way he talked: his pregnant pauses, his mild manner. You’d think someone so mild-mannered wouldn’t be a superhero, but he truly is a superhero. He’s an incredible human being, and I miss talking with him probably more than anybody can imagine. I met his daughter recently. Oh, it was emotional for me. She looks so much like her dad… She said, ‘I know why my dad picked you. You’re the right one for the job.’”
Miklos says it would take him 1,000 years to investigate all 60 anomalies on Cooper’s treasure map if he only had one crew.
If he had 50 boats, he’d need 50 years.
“I hear Gordon all the time in the back of my head: ‘You’re on the right trail!’”

Links :

Thursday, May 11, 2017

How maps became deadly innovations in WWI

This 1918 map depicts the deadly toll taken by German U-boats during the war.

Each red dot represents a sunken ship (see below for a close-up of the British coast).

Maps Courtesy Library of Congress

From National Geographic by Greg Miller

Advances in weaponry and cartography had deadly repercussions in World War I, which the United States entered 100 years ago today.

By the time the United States entered World War I, 100 years ago today, the conflict had been raging in Europe for nearly three years.
It was to become one of the deadliest wars in human history, claiming more than 15 million lives.

Advances in military technology—including more lethal artillery and rapid-fire machine guns— contributed to the heavy toll.
Maps, too, played a role.
Recent cartographic innovations allowed artillery gunners to fire at targets they couldn’t directly see and aim their guns without first firing “ranging shots” that would ruin the element of surprise. Airplanes—another relatively recent invention—allowed both sides to update their maps daily with the positions of enemy troops.

This map tracks the S.M.S. Emden, an infamous German raider (see main text) that attacked Allied commercial ships in the Indian Ocean—a reminder that WWI was a truly global conflict.

Maps Courtesy Library of Congress

The maps illustrate these deadly innovations and other defining features of the war, including the complex networks of trenches dug by both sides and the devastating German U-boat attacks on Allied commercial ships—a major factor in drawing the U.S. into the conflict.
Many of the maps, which come from the Library of Congress, were featured in a recent paper and two blog posts by Ryan Moore, a cartographic specialist at the library with an interest in military history.

This secret map made by the British Navy shows the position of German mines and progress on clearing them in August 1918.Maps Courtesy Library of Congress

Throughout most of human history, people could only take aim at an enemy they could see.
By WWI that had changed, thanks to powerful artillery that could fire well beyond the line of sight. But this created a new challenge: how to aim at a target that’s not directly visible.

One approach was to use spotters, who’d take up a vantage point on a hill or other elevated area and send messages back to the gunners about where their shots were landing.
Radios had been invented by that point, but they were still too bulky to be widely used in the field. Instead, both sides used cable telephone lines—and human runners when the lines got cut by enemy fire.
“Someone would actually be running back and forth through the shell fire to communicate the messages,” Moore says.
The gridded map below, which shows the effective range of different types of artillery pieces, is an example of the type used by spotters and gunners to coordinate artillery fire.
It’s no work of art, but it represents a remarkable step in the evolution of warfare.

Aerial Photographic Analysis by Doughboy Cartographer Willard B. Prince
Map Courtesy Library of Congress

Aerial photography turned out to be another deadly innovation. Flying was still new and dangerous back then, but photos shot from above vastly improved tactical maps, Moore says.

“These guys would risk their lives in these ‘flying coffins,’ as they were called, flying at 12,000 feet above the enemy with a guy leaning out the back with a camera.”

That altitude was considered safe from anti-aircraft fire, but photographing crucial details sometimes required flying lower.

“They would be taking photos on a daily basis, and a whole crew of analysts would pore over the photos looking for the smallest changes in the landscape,” Moore says.

To speed the process along, pilots would fly over the mapmakers’ position and drop the latest film from the plane in a cannister, along with notes on the crew’s observations.

The mapmakers would develop the film in the field and update the maps with new targets.

In the meantime, of course, the enemy would be on the move again.

Both sides dug elaborate networks of trenches to protect their men and enable them to hold a line.

At the highest levels of command, the positions of friendly and enemy troops alike would be depicted (see above).

But maps given to junior officers showed only enemy troop locations, Moore says.

A junior officer would already know the position of his own troops, so there was no need to put that on a map that could be captured by the enemy.

The “exclusion zone” enforced by German U-boats off the coast of North America (shown on the map, top left, in this German illustration) was a major factor in drawing the U.S. into WWI.
Maps Courtesy Library of Congress

Another new technology put to deadly use in WWI was the submarine.

Although military subs date back to the American Revolutionary War, the Germans’ widespread use of U-boats to attack civilian and commercial vessels was unprecedented.

Several maps in the gallery depict the war at sea, including British intelligence maps of efforts to track a notorious German raiding vessel and keep their own harbors free of German mines.

U-boats shipwrecks

Most of these maps were never seen by civilians.

But after the war ended, people around the world were fascinated by maps of the treaty negotiations.

Redrawing the borders of Europe was a contentious and political process—and the end result helped set the stage for World War II—but maps published around this time were wildly popular, Moore says.

“All sections of society were interested in these changes,” he says.

“What’s the world going to look like now?”

Links :

National Geographic : These Colorful Propaganda Maps Fueled 20th-Century Wars
Wired : Disturbing 'war map' plots the spread of bloody conflicts and deaths across the globe
Geographical : Mapping the world at war
Business Insider : These 11 declassified maps show how the CIA saw the world at the height of the Cold War
AtlasObscura : The ‘Balloon Maps’ That Aided Exploration, War, And Tourism
GeoGarage blog : The CIA is celebrating its cartography division's 75th ...

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

As Arctic ice vanishes, new shipping routes open

From NYTimes by Jugal K. Patel and Henry Fountain

As global warming melts sea ice across the Arctic, shipping routes once thought impossible — including directly over the North Pole — may open up by midcentury.
But high costs may keep the new routes from being used right away.

On March 7, 2017, Arctic sea ice reached its annual wintertime maximum extent, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

The Arctic sea ice extent set a record low after a warm winter.

Combining the Arctic and Antarctic numbers shows that the planet’s global sea ice levels on Feb. 13 were at their lowest point since satellites began to continuously measure sea ice in 1979.

The amount of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean has declined sharply each decade since the 1980s, according to measurements taken each September when the ice is at its minimum.
Older, thicker ice is disappearing as well.
Scientists say global warming is largely responsible for the changes.
Parts of the Arctic are warming twice as fast as elsewhere.

The changing conditions offer an opening to shipping companies.

The Arctic is potentially a faster, more direct route between Asia and ports in Europe and eastern North America.

Currently there is relatively little cargo shipped through the region.

Although shipping will increase over the next decade, especially as Russia develops oil and gas fields in Siberia, total Arctic cargo tonnage is expected to remain only a small fraction of the amount carried along southern routes through the Suez and Panama canals.

But with “middle of the road” warming — higher than the 2015 Paris accord target but lower than the most extreme climate change forecasts — more Arctic shipping routes could open, both for ordinary ships and those that are built to move through thicker ice.

Optimal September navigation for hypothetical projected trans-arctic shipping routes seeking to cross the Arctic Ocean between the North Atlantic (Rotterdam, The Netherlands and St. John's, Newfoundland) and the Pacific (Bering Strait) during consecutive years 2006--2015 and 2040--2059 as facilitated by ensemble-average GCM projections of sea ice concentration and thickness assuming RCPs 4.5 (medium-low radiative forcing) and 8.5 (high radiative forcing) climate change scenarios. Red lines indicate fastest available trans-Arctic routes for PC6 ships; blue lines indicate fastest available transits for common OW ships.

Backdrops indicate period-average sea ice concentrations in 2006--2015 and 2040--2059.
Data-source: Smith, L.C. and Stephenson, S.R. (2013). New Trans-Arctic shipping routes navigable by midcentury.

Even direct over-the-pole routes would potentially be navigable, at least during some part of the summer-fall shipping season.

“We know what is likely to happen to sea ice,” said Nathanael Melia, one of the researchers at the University of Reading in Britain who calculated how the routes might change as warming continues to the middle of the century.

“It will reduce decade on decade, and open up vast swaths of the Arctic Ocean.”

As Arctic routes become more direct, voyage times could fall to less than three weeks in some cases, making Arctic shipping potentially more attractive than the southern routes in coming decades, Dr. Melia’s research shows.

Just because shippers could make greater use of Arctic routes does not necessarily mean they will.

Ice conditions will still vary greatly from year to year, which would discourage shipping companies for which precise timing of shipments is crucial.

Other costs including higher insurance rates, as well as safety considerations, may deter other efforts. A report last year by Copenhagen Business School concluded that trans-Arctic shipping by ordinary vessels between Europe and Asia was unlikely to become economically viable before 2040.

Links :