In this blog post, Stuart Dunn explains the implications of a vote of the United Nations General Assembly to adopt the Equal Earth projection over the more commonly used Mercator map, which privileges the degrees of travel between to points on a sphere to surface area. In addition to explaining the differences between the two maps, Dunn also shares a link to a resource that visualizes how the differences have markedly altered the concept of relative size of different countries. The author is also sure to point out that both projections, while necessary for different purposes, are not perfect:
Equal Earth certainly goes some way to addressing the historic visual imbalance [the Mercator map] created. However, and I will no doubt not be the only person to point out, it is not a “correct” or “accurate” visualisation, or even a “complete” one – no projection is. It is a set of mathematical abstractions and compromises which renders visible what is otherwise too huge to be visible. In that process, some combination of data – be it angles, surface area or symbology – will always be compromised. While the UN vote re-surfaces this debate and brings the matter back to public attention, Equal Earth is certainly not a panacea — a fact fully recognised by the authors of the paper in which it was originally proposed.
This post is a useful resource to explain to student the history of cartography as context for working with maps in the modern day, and it encourages those who read it to think critically about visualizing geographical data.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Kayla Abner, Amy Gay, and Claire Burns (Editors-at-Large), Hillary Richardson and Molly McGuire (Editors for the week), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Ruth Carpenter, Pamella Lach, Christine Salek, and Rachel Starry (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).