Featured maps

#mapsathome is a great hashtag on Twitter that’s packed full of people sharing random maps and map-related objects that are within their home. I want them all! #mapsathome on Twitter

While not strictly spatial, this fun website lets you explore obscure radio stations from around the world using a 3D map in your browser. It has been created by Jonathan Puckey and his team and it’s quite addictive — I’ve found plenty of

And just like that, the #30DayMapChallenge is over! It’s been a pleasure witnessing all the amazing spatial visualisations that have been produced over the past month. So many people were involved and it’s been fascinating to see the wide range of approaches

This fantastic animated visualisation by Joshua Stevens shows black carbon being dispersed into the atmosphere as a result of fires across Australia. The data is from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which regularly takes observed data and uses that to work out what

Arguably my favourite season of the year, Autumn can completely transform a landscape through the changing colours of leaves. This map by The Washington Post visualises the types of forests across the United States and the colours you might find there. I also like

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this series of maps by Taylor Baldwin, taking taxi data for San Francisco and animating it in various ways. It’s been nice to see the progression as Taylor digs further into the data and refines his approach. Playing with

This map and accompanying article from National Geographic illustrates the complex situation in the Arctic. With so many countries bordering the region, the question of who owns what is not a simple one to answer. See which nations are claiming parts of the melting

The winners of Daniel P. Huffman’s MonoCarto competition have been announced (previously named the Monochrome Mapping Competition). The winning entries are all fantastic, with my particular favourite being the hand-drawn map of Ireland — so much attention to detail. I’d love to see

Using an open dataset of building and address data, this interactive 3D map visualises the age of buildings across the Netherlands. The age needs to be taken with a pinch of salt — as it’s been proven to be inconsistent in places — however it

This visualisation from Scott Reinhard is another great example of LIDAR data being passed through Blender to create a 3D effect using realistic lighting and shadows. There are no 3D building models being used here — the result is created by artificially extruding GeoTIFF elevation

I stumbled across Landfall a few months ago and have been fascinated by their work ever since. Their speciality is physical 3D topographical reliefs that are painstakingly crafted by hand from nautical charts and Ordnance Survey maps. You can commission them to create a

Do you know what would make maps better? If they jiggled and wobbled as you move them around! This is exactly what these elastic maps do, giving elevated areas more elasticity than the lower areas as you move the map around. The result is

Ever found it hard to place where you live on a map? I know I have. This concept by Dylan Moriarty is a beautiful way of thinking about maps and how they compare to our mental representation of the places that we’re familiar