This page is a work in progress!

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Getting started activities

It can be helpful to start a mapping project by thinking and talking about what you want to make a map of, why you want to map a particular place, and who the map will be for. What new information do you wish to provide with a map?

The resources and activities below offer some ways to get started with answering these questions before you start gathering equipment and tools for mapping.

Figuring out where to map

If you can, visit the site or talk to people who live there. If you plan to do balloon or kite mapping, look for potential sites to launch or fly from, and check wind and weather patterns at the site.

Defining advocacy goals

For any community science project, it helps to start with determining your goals. This will help you figure out which steps to take to achieve your goals--in the case of mapping, your goals might influence where you capture images, what kinds of images you take, and what other information to collect at the same time.

Below in the section called “Using your maps and aerial images”, you’ll find more information on using maps for specific purposes or audiences.

How to choose a mapping tool

How to decide on a tool for mapping: this activity includes information on open DIY methods for balloon, kite, and pole mapping, and when each tool works best and their limitations.

If you’d like to use existing maps and digital tools to create maps, rather than capturing your own aerial images, check out the section called [LINK_] below.

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Tools and methods for DIY mapping

Aerial photography

The wiki pages and posts listed here are rich resources on how to capture your own aerial images of a place. By capturing your own aerial images, you get the most current information on the exact location you’re interested in.

Other ways to map

• Host a collaborative map drawing workshop: also called “mental mapping,” this activity describes how a community group can use markers and paper to map what they know.
• A Card Game Approach to Community Mapping: this activity by @dbsnp describes a neat way to gather information about a community’s environmental hazards and social risks and map them as a group.

You can also use existing open or publicly available maps if you don’t want or need to capture your own aerial images.

• Green Map System: started by @WendyBrawer, Green Maps and its open source mapping tools enable anyone to create a community map embedded with icons, local stories, and information about ecology and culture. Their latest platform, OGM2, is here: https://new.opengreenmap.org/
• OpenStreetMap: open maps contributed and maintained by a global community.
• Aerial Imagery in the Public Domain

Using your maps and aerial images

You might want to use your maps for specific purposes or to communicate with specific people. To help illustrate some of the many ways maps can be used for advocacy, we highlight some of the different ways that maps can be used below.

While thinking about goals for mapping, we can also understand that the process of mapping and the map created represent much more than a communication tool for a single purpose. Making a map builds a connection to a place. And even with a purpose in mind, a map might start off documenting a location and showing neighbors what’s there, while ending up being used as a tool to communicate with governments and change policies that affect many more people.