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The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference was an event held at Arizona State University's Tempe campus between February 28 and March 1, 2019. The conference marked an unprecedented exploration of the science, art, history, and practice of Grand Canyon cartography. It was a celebration and critical examination of the cartographic history of a global landscape icon.

Free and open to all, the conference delivered a two-day program of map-based story-telling, transdisciplinary analysis, state-of-the-art geospatial and cartographic demonstrations, engaging hands-on activities, and open community dialogue.

Inspiration and justification for convening such a conference was the confluence of two milestones in Grand Canyon history: (1) the centennial (1919-2019) of the legislation that led to Grand Canyon National Park, and (2) the sesquicentennial (1869-2019) of John Wesley Powell's famous first exploration and mapping survey through the canyons carved by the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon.

The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference originated as a component of a larger research project supported through an ASU Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) seed grant -- Mapping Grand Canyon: A Critical Cartographic History.

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Legislating the Boundaries: Redrawing the Map in 1925 – Video Recording

Description
It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for…

It is a truism that maps cannot exist without boundaries, whether those boundaries are the borders of the map itself or the geographic coordinates circumscribing the limits of the physical space being mapped. Grand Canyon National Park, like all national parks, has written and legislated descriptions that form the basis for mapping the evolving nature of the park. The year 1925 saw the first significant re-writing of the legal boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park since its legislative creation in 1919.  This presentation will discuss the “sausage-making” involved in re-writing the borders of Grand Canyon National Park.
ContributorsOetting, Ed (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-02-28
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Conference Program

DescriptionOfficial program of the Mapping Grand Canyon Conference. Document was designed and optimized for digital dissemination and mobile device (smartphone, tablet) viewing and interactive browsing. Document was deliberately not printed in paper format with the intent of minimizing the event's ecological footprint through a reduction of paper and ink waste.
ContributorsWatson, Amy Carolyn (Compiler, Designer) / Toro, Matthew (Compiler, Cartographer) / Avila, Theresa (Contributor) / Field, Kenneth (Contributor) / Fry, Michael (Contributor) / Griffin, Dori (Contributor) / Kaplinski, Matt (Contributor) / Karlstrom, Karl (Contributor) / Manone, Mark (Contributor) / Oetting, Ed (Contributor) / Patterson, Tom (Contributor) / Quartaroli, Richard David (Contributor) / Runge, Peter (Contributor) / Semken, Steve (Contributor) / Smilovsky, Nikolas (Contributor) / Smith, Stephanie (Contributor) / Spindler, Rob (Contributor) / Trapido-Lurie, Barbara (Contributor) / Upchurch, Jonathan (Contributor) / Deitrick, Stephanie (Contributor) / Lemar, Shea (Contributor) / Messinger, Ellen Murray (Contributor) / Sherwood, Jill (Contributor) / Wilhelm, Karina (Contributor)
Created2019-02
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Mapping Death in Grand Canyon – Video Recording

Description
Over 700 known deaths have occurred in Grand Canyon from the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell in 1869 to present day. Causes range from suicides to accidental drownings, heatstroke, snake bite, flash floods, aircraft collisions, crashes and even murder. Based on the book ‘Over the Edge: Death in…

Over 700 known deaths have occurred in Grand Canyon from the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell in 1869 to present day. Causes range from suicides to accidental drownings, heatstroke, snake bite, flash floods, aircraft collisions, crashes and even murder. Based on the book ‘Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon’ by Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers, this map illustrates the geography of deathly incidents. It uses a pan-sharpening technique to create a crisp, vibrant combination of layer tints and hillshades. The colours are defined to allow the map to be viewed in normal two dimensional viewing but in 3D when viewed using chromadepth glasses. The map provides a dramatic, visually engaging illustration of a unique dataset and maintain the first geocoded display of the complete record of deaths in Grand Canyon. In so doing, it illustrates the development and application of novel cartographic approaches. Vignettes describing the incidents bring the quantity of death into perspective through the telling of short individual stories, some fantastic, some tragic. The presentation will discuss the map’s creation in 2012, a recent update, and also the response to its publication. There were some very real issues faced in portraying an often sensitive subject matter, and some of the failures in this respect and the lessons learned will be explored.
ContributorsField, Kenneth (Author, Speaker) / ASU Marketing Hub (Videographer)
Created2019-03-01