

Geologic Map of Mars - chton
http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/

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prewett
The USGS is amazing. They have incredibly detailed information for the US:
elevation (within 10 ft in many places), demographics, geology, and others.
They have an amazing geologic map for Big Bend National Park [1] (a very
geologically interesting park in southern Texas). Global maps are a lot harder
to come by, unfortunately, although I did find a similar geologic map of the
Earth as the one for Mars (divided by pieces) at [2].

[1] [http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3142/](http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3142/)

[2]
[http://energy.usgs.gov/OilGas/AssessmentsData/WorldPetroleum...](http://energy.usgs.gov/OilGas/AssessmentsData/WorldPetroleumAssessment/WorldGeologicMaps.aspx)

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daveslash
The USGS really is great. It's one part of my government that I'm very proud
of.

Here's a file I found a while back. Not Mars related, but pretty amazing. The
national file is a delimited txt file with just about every geographical point
of interest in the U.S. I've imported it into a SQL database and now run
queries against it when I'm looking for a weekend road trip.

[http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm](http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/download_data.htm)

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mrfusion
Which file is it? There seem to be a lot of options on that page.

Would there be a way to query wikipedia for the same type of information, or
combine the two sources?

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daveslash
It's "NationalFile_20140601.zip - Download all national features in one .zip
file "

I can't think of a way to query wikipedia - not like this allows. Once this
file has been imported into sql (I use SQL Server), I run queries like _SELECT
DISTINCT [feature_type] FROM dbo.nationalFile WHERE [state] = 'California'_

This will give me a list of all types of features in California. From there,
I'll see something that looks interesting (like "lava field" or "mine") and
I'll run another query like _SELECT [feature_name], [latitude], [longitude]
FROM dbo.nationalFile WHERE [state] = 'California' AND feature_type='lava
field'._

This will give me a very clear list list. I can't imagine there would be a way
to do this with Wikipedia, or any other online source that doesn't offer an
API.

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capnrefsmmat
The structured data (such as geodata) in Wikipedia is being migrated to
Wikidata, which does offer APIs:

[https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page)

If you dig, I think you can find RDF dumps of the database.

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dmsimpkins
This map is certainly very interesting, but it suffers as a visualization. The
topographical map is nice, due to its simplicity and well-chosen color scale,
but the main geological map certainly has some problems.

The biggest problem is that they are choosing two represent two different
dimensions of data(age/time period and terrain type), but are using seemingly
random variations of hue to show these variations. Additionally, with so many
distinct hues, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between some
areas on the map (for example, Hesperian basin unit and Hesperian polar look
very similar).

A more effective way to visualize this data would be to apply a separate hue
to the 8 categories of terrain unit, since these are categorical data points.
Then, visualize the geological age on a brightness scale, since this is more
of a quantitative measurement (obviously the current map also show the
particular time period, we'll just ignore that for now). I think this would
provide a much clearer view of the data, though you would lose a small bit of
granularity.

~~~
xbryanx
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but here's some relevant explanation
of their color choices which largely seem to have been chosen for consistency
with previous publications:

[http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/pdf/sim3292_pamphlet.pdf](http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3292/pdf/sim3292_pamphlet.pdf)
Page 10, search for the word color.

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antonios
Very interesting, thank you. It's also a nice benchmark for PDF.js.

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nitrogen
Watching the individual shapes render on the PDF in Firefox's PDF viewer
reminded me of fond memories of DOS-based mapping software I had as a kid on
an 8MHz 8088 PC-XT with CGA graphics. Once upon a time, you actually had to
wait for each individual vector shape to be drawn :-).

Edit: maybe this comment should have been a reply to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8046656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8046656)

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hemmer
This is lovely, would probably make a nice print! I'm working my way through
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy; this makes a great accompaniment.

~~~
natosaichek
I just finished the second book myself and had the same thought. All the
various escarpments and planae are hard to keep track of. There's a lot of
geography in those books.

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roberthahn
I am particularly fascinated by the small topological map. I like imagining
what Mars would be like under Earth-like conditions - if a watery planet
looked like that, how would people live? Where would the population be most
concentrated? How would the political landscape be influenced by the
geography?

I guess I spent too much of my childhood playing Role Master :-)

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callumprentice
I've started work on visualizing this in WebGL - looking through docs and the
large DBs to see how I can render it.

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cshimmin
Anyone know if it is possible to get a large-format print version? Or even how
I could find it in the library?

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markbnine
You can go to the map store ([http://store.usgs.gov](http://store.usgs.gov))
and search for _Geologic Map of Mars_. Make sure you get the one from 2014.

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collinglass
Is anyone else's computer getting extremely slow trying to move/open the file?
(after downloading)

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svankie
I suppose I'm a little late. All I get are 404 errors. :-(

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chton
It's still working for me, but the big map is taking a long time to load. I
expect they're having some trouble handling the influx of downloaders from the
media attention.

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washedup
Any way to get this in Google Earth yet?

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spingsprong
Doesn't work for me

