EVS-Islands

I'm known as the "Mapman" teacher. Just this week my students worked on maps of Japan and Asia. The outline maps were made using Marplot loaded with 1:5,000,000 scale world shorelines. Any Social Studies teacher would love to work with Marplot and world shorelines.

All you teachers, listen up. You need to create your own map machine. The slideshow is a "How To" fetch map files, load them and create layers. If you really want to create your own map machine, you must first prep Marplot after you have installed it. Delete the Prince William County layers and then start with the slideshow instructions. Good luck. Enjoy!

Posted by Mr Minton at 9/22/2006 10:05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Talk about being strategically located. Like it's distant neighbor to the southwest, Wake Island, Minami-tori-shima (aka Marcus Island) is a tank full of aircraft fuel away from Japan using WW-II vintage aircraft. Yet it is listed as a a "By-Passed Island" during WWII.  There were 2,500 Japanese troops stationed on the island.  However, this island was the focus of a number of attacks.  Read the following account.

"March 4th, 1942...At 4:35 am, USS Enterprise sounds "Flight Quarters" and hurls 38 bombers at Marcus Island, 1,000 miles from Tokyo, in a one-punch hit-and-run raid. The SBD Dauntlesses form up in formation amid cloudy skies in pre-dawn darkness, under Lt. Howard Young. The bombers are guided in by Enterprise's radar, and reach their target at 6:30 am, finding a small airfield surrounded by water. The bombers swoop down, release their loads at 6,000 feet, and whack the base's fuel dumps and radio towers. The Japanese are totally surprised, and take a few minutes to hit back with machine guns. They hole several planes and shoot down one, capturing pilot and bombardier. Having sliced up Marcus Island, Enterprise recovers her planes, and heads for Pearl Harbor at top speed. " (WWII Plus 55)

There were additional attacks directed at the Japanese forces on this island.  During the Vietnam War Minami-tori-shima was used periodically by Air America (CIA Air Force).  William Romska has a number of images of the island when it was an American base.

Today this island is used by the Japan Meteorological Agency making contributions to Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW).

This is a tiny island with lots of history.  The images come from Google Earth and the map was constructed quickly.  It has taken much longer to write this post then it did to make the island map.  Enjoy!

Posted by Mr Minton at 9/21/2006 09:49:00 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

I am a long time user of Marplot. Not because it is the best GIS Freeware out there, but it is what I have always used. It has some serious limitations. And I find myself always pushing those limitations as far as I can.

The world uses JPEG images to pass information back and forth. Marplot requires that any image used within their software be in BMP format. A 3MB BMP image shrinks down to 180KB in JPEG. So, I accomodate the software and place large images into Marplot. This morning I imported my all-time largest BMP file. It is 166MB in size, a real whopper! And it loaded without any problem. In fact, it loaded and georectified without any intervention on my part.

What is it that I loaded, you ask? It is free raster data from USGS CMG InfoBank Atlas, specifically the Global Background Map. The file is 126MBs, large, too large for you dial-up folks.

The file downloaded quickly. I converted the TIFF format into BMP, opened my World Islands map in Marplot and imported the very large BMP file into my map. And, voila! It dropped in without any problems. I now have a slick new layer that shows physical features both on and off shore.

And my favorite part of this entire exercise - the data is FREE!

Life is swell! Enjoy!

Posted by Mr Minton at 9/20/2006 05:47:00 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

This atoll seems like the place where one could leave this busy world behind.  About 200 hardy souls live on the main island of Pingelap.  The other two islands, Tugulu and Takai, are uninhabited.  The main island has a large area dedicated to taro farming.  The main island also has mangrove growth.  Besides taro, I am sure they cultivate coconut.  As all Pacific Islander do, the inhabitants derive much of their sustenance from the sea.

There is a lengthy article, written in 1998, entitled Micronesian Diary-Pingelap.  Written by Dr Felicia Beardsley during a visit to Micronesia, she speaks of a trip to the atoll and of her extensive exploration of it.  Wikipedia has an article about the main island of Pohnpei.  This article cites a book by Oliver Saks that discusses color blindness on Pingelap Atoll.  Seems this happens when you have a small gene pool to draw from.

Yes, this atoll seems like the perfect place to leave our hectic world behind.  I wonder if the folks on this atoll are concerned with high gasoline prices or about the consequences of a tumultuous Middle East.  I would hope that the burning topic of the day is whether to fish or cut bait.  If I were there, I would walk about and see what I could see.  After a few hours and numerous dips in the ocean to cool off, I would string up my hammock, cover it with a mosquito net, read for five-minutes before falling asleep.

Enjoy!

Posted by Mr Minton at 9/17/2006 08:01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post