Map Projections

This week in lab 5 we have done the Map projection with 3 different type of map projections, including confrontal, Equal Distant, and Equal Area. With each different map projection, we also measured the distance between Washington D.C. and Kabul. With this exercise, we will see each map projections' advantages and disadvantages. The top map is the original map that was given. follow by the second row which are two confrontal projections. Third row are two Equal Area projections, and the fourth row are two Equal distant projection.

The Confrontal projections are very pleasing to read, as every major continents are appeared to be on the map. when perpendicular gradients, you can find any place with accurate latitude and longitude mark with confrontal map. However this map has distorted proportions of area and distance. South pole becomes extremely big comparing to its actual size, and Africa became extremely small comparing to the actual size. This is a major draw back of confrontal projection. If someone want to study the general geographic shapes and actual areas of continents, the confrontal map can be very misleading, such as Africa is very large continent, but in Mercator projection, Africa is very small.

The Equal Area map projection is my most favored map projection type. because this map has every continent in its real shape and area. It is most applicable to people who wants to study the real geographic size of the Earth. However the disadvantage are that the continents appear to be narrower and end up disappear towards the top and the bottom of the map. Also some maps are not a cylindrical projection, but rather elliptical. Some places such as Australia will also become distorted in shape. The shape distortion towards the pole is inevitable in this kinds of map projection.

The Equal Distant map has accurate distance measure between two points and this map is greatly used in measure of missile lunches and traveling flight. This kind of maps are not for daily uses for ordinary people. most of these maps are appear to be spherical shape and all of the continents are concentrated on one side of the earth, and oceans on the other side of the sphere projection. the location and area of continents are distorted in this case. Sometime Equal Distant map can be hard to read when the true north is not available too. In general, there is no perfect map projection, but different map projections have different uses with their own advantages and disadvantages.