Map Projection Selection Tool

Caitlin Dempsey

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The Map Projection Selection Tool was developed to help cartographers pick the best map projection for making maps in a GIS software program.  Selecting an appropriate map projection is one of the first important decisions when working and mapping out GIS data.  Since two dimensional maps require a compromise, selecting which parameters are necessary to preserve (size, shape, or direction) is important.  The Map Projection Select Tool provides suggestions for picking a projection that preserves the spatial property selected and is accurate for the geographic area of interest.

Users set up the geographic extent and distortion property (equal-area, conformal, equidistant, or compromise).  A list of suggested appropriate map projections is then provided to the user.

The suggestions and additional projection parameters are pulled from “A Guide to Selecting Map Projection” book chapter, written by the Cartography and Geovisualization Group at Oregon State University.   Next to each projection listing is a link to the  PROJ.4 library code for use in GIS and cartography software programs.

The application was developed by Bojan Šavrič, a PhD student in geography at Oregon State University, and is run using Leaflet (an open-source JavaScript library for web mapping) with map tiles from Esri.

Visit: Map Projection Selection Tool





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Caitlin Dempsey
Caitlin Dempsey is a geographer, writer, and the founder and editor of Geography Realm. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from San José State University. She has been writing about geography, maps, geographic information systems (GIS), and environmental topics for more than two decades through Geography Realm and its predecessor site, GIS Lounge. Her interests include cartography, remote sensing, environmental geography, and the relationship between people and place.

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