It’s hard to look at the news this year without seeing a red and blue map of the United States. These maps are a national obsession, and they have a long history, but they’re also deeply flawed.
You can see why in the map below, which shows the results from the 2012 election. The vast sea of red in the middle of the country might lead you to believe Mitt Romney won. But land masses don’t decide elections, the electoral college does. Montana may be big, but it has fewer electoral votes than tiny Rhode Island.
Cartographers have been experimenting with ways to better illustrate election results and polling data. One representation that seems to be getting traction this election is the cartogram, which distorts the shapes of the states so their size corresponds to the number of electoral votes they have. In the cartogram version of the 2012 election map below, you can see more clearly how coastal states and states in the upper Midwest carried the election for Obama.
The advantages of the cartogram have led some media outlets to include them in their coverage of this year’s election. Both the Washington Post and FiveThirtyEight developed cartograms this year to represent presidential polling data.
Cartograms have drawbacks, though. They mess with geography and make the states look strangely bloated, blocky, or pixelated, depending on the method used. Some people think they’re downright ugly. And for most people they’re not as familiar and intuitive to read as an old-fashioned map. At least not yet.
That’s why the Post lets readers toggle between the cartogram and a traditional map, says deputy graphics editor Chiqui Esteban. Despite their advantages, cartograms probably won’t be a fixture of mainstream media coverage on the eve of the election this year, Esteban says: “Election night is such a big deal, you don’t want to break so much from tradition.”
In cartography, as in politics, change can be slow to come.
original website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/improved-election-map-cartograms/
obsession 摆脱不了的思想，妄想
flawed 有缺点的
electoral 选举的，选举人的
cartographer 制图者
poll 舆论调查，投票数
traction 牵引力
cartogram 统计地图
distort 扭曲，曲解
coverage 报道范围，放送范围
drawback 缺点
mess with 干涉，扰乱
bloated 膨胀的，过大的
blocky 斑驳的
pixelated 像素化的
downright 彻底的，直率的
intuitive 直观的，直觉的
toggle 切换；棒形纽扣
deputy 代理
fixture 固定装置
The National Park Service was created to protect and preserve the United States’ natural wonders. But what happens when climate change starts to alter these sites?
On Thursday, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a new report revealing that three-quarters of 276 national parks are experiencing an earlier onset of spring. Half of the parks studied are experiencing “extreme” early springs.
The report authors discovered this by looking at historical data dating back to 1901.
For the parks in the “extreme” category, they found that “the onset of spring is earlier than 95 percent of the historical range,” says Jake Weltzin, an ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the authors of the report.
“And we’re talking on the order of weeks.”
Good News for Invasive Species
Jewell made Thursday’s announcement in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, one of the sites that has experienced an early onset of spring. Weltzin says that, like many parks, Shenandoah is struggling to manage invasive species like kudzu—a scourge that can be exacerbated by earlier springs.
“Biological invasions are a really big deal in the national parks,” he says. In Saguaro National Park, Arizona, near where Weltzin lives, one of the invasive species that park staff struggle with most is buffelgrass.
“The warmer the winter and the warmer the spring, the sooner it can start growing,” Weltzin says of buffelgrass. “And so a lot of the other native plants are sort of sequestered in place.”
Another problem that earlier springs present for parks is a mismatch between plants and pollinators.
“Not every organism is going to respond the same way to an early spring,” Weltzin says. “Some plants might respond a certain way, but the hummingbirds or other pollinators might not be affected in part because of where the migration routes are taking them or when they start migrating.
“So they may be arriving and it may be too late for certain species,” he says.
Looking Ahead
The Park Service’s new report was actually initiated by the National Phenology Network, a science nonprofit of which Weltzin is executive director. For the report, the network used a tool that it had developed to assess the onset of spring in different locations.
“What we’re doing really is producing maps of spring for the entire nation,” he says. “The national parks is just sort of the first application. As we go along, we hope to be able to apply this to the national wildlife refuges and other protected areas.”
The purpose of the current report is to give staff at individual parks a sense of how climate change is affecting their sites, rather than make prescriptions about how parks should deal with this change. Given the diverse ecosystems among the more than 250 parks surveyed, more research is needed to determine the more specific ways in which climate change is affecting particular parks.
“There’s clearly more work to be done,” says Weltzin. “And you know, we’ve got about a century behind us, and there’s a century ahead of us.”
invasive 入侵的
kudzu 野葛
scourge 灾难，烦恼
exacerbate 使恶化
sequester 隔离
pollinator 花粉媒介者
hummingbird 蜂鸟
initiate 开始
executive 执行
Humans have long had a fascination with lunar events—and with the rise of the Internet, all kinds of moon moments have become media sensations. Consider super moons, harvest moons, and the rare super blood moon total eclipse.
On September 30, sky-watchers in the Western Hemisphere may be tempted to add another lunar moniker to the list: a “black moon,” popularly defined as the second new moon in a month. However, it’s not exactly going to make for good sky-watching.
New moons occur when the moon’s orbit takes it between Earth and the sun, leaving the lunar orb’s unilluminated side facing Earth. At night, this phase of the moon is impossible to see: Since new moons are in the same part of the sky as the sun, they rise and set with the sun and are overwhelmed by its glare.
New moons can be readily seen only when they pass directly in front of the sun, causing solar eclipses. Otherwise, sky-watchers must look to the days before or after a new moon, when just a sliver of the moon’s sunlit side is visible from Earth.
Usually, new moons occur only once a month, but because there’s a slight disjunct between the moon’s phases—a 29.5-day cycle, on average—and the Gregorian calendar, some months can have two new moons: one at the beginning and one at the end. Joe Rao of Space.com notes that this double-dipping occurs once every 32 months or so.
In this sense, a black moon is like the evil twin of a blue moon, conventionally understood as the second full moon in a month. But let’s be clear: This new moon—like any astronomical event—doesn’t bring ill tidings or herald the end of days, despite the astrological fear-mongering that has been seeping through the web.
If anything, this black moon is a harbinger of new beginnings and festivities: On the evening of October 2, the barely visible waxing crescent moon will shine on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. And on October 3, the growing crescent will mark the beginning of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic lunar calendar.
The September 30 new moon won’t even be a true black moon for the majority of humankind. In the Eastern Hemisphere, the upcoming new moon starts after midnight on October 1, putting it in the wrong month to fit the popular definition. (In London, for instance, the moon reaches its new phase at 1:11 a.m. local time, meaning that the United Kingdom won’t experience a black moon at all in the coming days, much less the apocalypse.)
As Rao points out, the Eastern Hemisphere will instead get a black moon at the end of the month, with a second new moon arriving on October 30. And for people living in East Asia, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia, the black moon will come on the perfect spooky date: October 31, or Halloween.
fascination 魅力
sensation 轰动
eclipse （日月）食
tempt 吸引
moniker 名字，绰号
make for 促进
readily 马上，容易
sliver 细长的小片
sunlit 被阳光照射的
disjunct 分离的
conventionally 习惯地
tiding 潮汐涨落
herald 告知
astrological 占星术的
mongering 买卖
seep 渗透
harbinger 前兆
festivity 祭典
wax 打蜡
apocalypse 启示
spooky 令人毛骨悚然的
