About Topographic Maps for Dummies

topographic map

The people who populated the old eHow.com website (a form of it still exists, but most of its content has been dispersed to niche sites) demonstrated startlingly little in the way of common sense. We're not talking specifically about freelancing contributors here, we're talking about the ones who scraped "titles" off the search engines. Of course, greedy freelancers proved more than equal to pretending to address those titles, which is how Henri Bauholz (nee Hank Nielsen) ended up butchering "The Disadvantages of Topographic Maps" for azCentral.com.

No discussion of the disadvantages is complete without mentioning the advantages, so we'll start there.

• Assuming you're comparing them to a GPS screen, a topographic map's battery never dies.
• Topographic maps are standardized.
• Topographic maps are not cluttered with advertisements.
• Etc.

Bauholz didn't say much about the advantages. In fact, he said nothing about that... instead inventing some rather tortured reasoning, starting with the bogus claim that, "...there are limits to what all the lines and symbols can tell the map reader." It's our considered opinion that the limits are far more likely to lie with the reader than the map. But we're here to make fun of Henri's logic, so let's take a look at what he says is wrong with topos:

• "Perhaps the biggest drawback of using a topographical map is that the information can be dated... map readers should be aware that the landscape and places on a map can change over time... natural events as landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, forest fires or hurricanes can make various places unrecognizable or sometimes unusable..." – Henri is apparently unaware that topographic maps are updated on an as-needed basis; more frequently than landslides and "drained lakes" occur.
• "Topographic maps are large and bulky, and so they might become a hindrance to backpackers and other wilderness adventurers, who wish to travel light." – A friggin' sheet of paper is heavy enough to deter its use while backpacking? We'll bet ol' Henri never leaves his smartphone behind!
• "Another disadvantage of a topographic map is that the information displayed is not exact." – Wait, what? USGS topographic maps are the gold standard in accuracy! It's for sure that random users are more likely to be in error than the maps being inaccurate.

That's just another example of an eHow freelancer pumping out the bull because he cares more about the cash than he cares about accuracy... and one more example of a Dumbass of the Day. Given that Bauholz's illustration of a "topographic map" is a political map of Middle Eastern countries, it's no surprise that he couldn't come up with a better idea.

copyright © 2019-2022 scmrak

SE - MAPS