Event | Courses and Workshops Live! At the Library: A Talk on Cartographic Relief by Cartographer Tom Patterson

Join renowned cartographer Tom Patterson for a talk covering his career as a cartographer at the National Park Service.

Patterson drew his first shaded relief map in 1980 as a graduate student at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. It was a crude pencil rendering of Taha‘a, French Polynesia, but seeing the complex island terrain clearly represented by the interplay of light and shadows hooked him, and thus began a lifelong cartographic quest.

This event will showcase the history of mapping at the U.S. National Park Service, including the transition from grayscale to natural color reliefs to represent the wide range of park environments and the use of geodata and software to mimic the exquisite manual panoramas of Heinrich Berann.

Patterson will conclude by addressing his work developing software that employs machine learning and AI for terrain presentation, including a sneak peek at new tools.

Attendees of the talk are also invited to participate in topographic games and crafts available in the Great Hall from 5 to 8 p.m.

A related collections display of topographic items from the Library of Congress will be open before and after the talk (5 to 6 p.m. and 7:30 to 8:00 p.m. in LJ-113.