I was always integrating maps in iNatting, knowing where people were before you or where you can’t get even if you wish. Historic maps would be an interesting addition, but before yesterday I thought there were no resources with digitizedd old maps, all I saw were pieces posted in Wikimedia, but whe…

Acme Mapper ( http://mapper.acme.com/ ) provides a nice ability to switch between different maps including Topo maps which are older and sometimes have interesting info. I’m only familiar with using it in US though, not elsewhere.

I still have a box of US Geological Survey topographic maps that I used a lot in my state back in the pre-GPS days. They’re still fun to look at it and see my old annotations.

The official City of Vienna webpage (wien.gv.at) has an incredibly rich source of all kinds of data and documents - also environmental data such as soil types, nature reserves, a register of more than 200,000 planted trees (each of those clickable for information such as species name, year of planti…

Love old maps. Here’s a good site to explore for US maps. Most are small scale and may not help with iNat targeting but they’re still fun. https://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/

USA government maps (topo and geologic mostly) of all ages https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngm-bin/ngm_compsearch.pl Google earth historical imagery tool is also very useful. Albuquerque 1984 vs 2023: [image] [image]

I love Google Earth too! But it only has the latest maps here, I really wanted to look at 2002 when we moved to a new house, but everything before 2009 there is very blurry. And sometimes it’s like that! [image]

Vermont ( a small state in the USA) has a full set of 1962 aerial photos, which is incredibly useful for a lot of things, though sadly most aren’t yet georeferenced. 1962 photos - entire state

CT has this too but from the 1930’s. Amazing to see how the state looked 100 years ago, and you can compare images with today to potentially find areas untouched by man and possible high in biodiversity. It’s also very sad to see how many areas are completely destroyed like the Great Wallingford s…

For those who don’t remember the time before GPS, we used to have to use paper topographic maps to determine a location for a specimen record. Figuring out latitude-longitude could be tough from a paper map, at least to any precision (although there were plastic protractor-like devices you could use…

Using old maps: your examples

Nature Talk

marina_gorbunova February 8, 2023, 3:47pm 5

I like this one! Their satellite view is a new one, Google still shows 2021 for their maps.

@carnifex like two different places! Rivers change the most imo. Planted trees data is amazing!

Topic		Replies	Views
Google Map Satellite Imagery is Outdated - What to do? Nature Talk question	22	6317	October 17, 2024
In pursuit of mappiness (part 1) Tutorials	7	6915	April 12, 2021
Looking for iNaturalist observation map visualisation suggestions General third-party-tools	23	6766	September 24, 2021
Use OpenStreetMap maps Feature Requests web , implemented	109	14793	August 27, 2024
Roads displaced from satellite imagery on Google Maps General	26	2652	January 29, 2024

Using old maps: your examples

Related topics