ABSTRACT
Mapmaking has its origins in ancient times most likely when civilizations formed to build settlements supporting large masses of people. Since then, expansion of human populations has produced an interest and need for identifying features important for exploration, transportation, navigation, municipal planning, and strategic military planning and for depicting the geographic limits of territories or nation states and property boundaries (public versus private lands) on paper (see Harley and Woodard 1987 for the early history of cartography). Maps are an attempt to illustrate a spatial concept of a feature deemed important enough by the cartographer or sponsoring agency/ organization to be depicted graphically. The feature is something seen on land, in water, or in the sky or interpreted from various sources. The phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true for maps, for the visible representation conveys a lot of information that can be interpreted by people of varied backgrounds. According to one source, the rst maps prepared to represent vegetation types were drafted in the mid-nineteenth century (Spalding et al. 1997).
