The World's Highest Mountains

Peaks and Valleys is an impressive 3D tour of the Earth's tallest mountains and deepest canyons. This Esri Story Map takes you on a journey from the tip of Mount Everest to the world's lowest valleys, desert basins and inland seas.

As you scroll through Peaks and Valleys the map automatically flies around the world to show each continent's highest mountains in glorious 3D. If you want to examine one of the locations in more detail then you can zoom in or out on the map and use your right mouse button to pan around the 3D imagery.

Scrolling information windows provide details on each of the featured peaks and valleys on the map. You can also use the links at the top of the map to jump to the separate sections on each of the Earth's continents,

If you want to create a similar mapped tour of the world then the Story Map Cascade documentation is a good place to start.

Air Pollution Near Schools

Greenpeace has released a map showing all nurseries and schools in England and Wales that are located near dangerously polluted roads. Currently there are at least 2,092 educational institutions that are within 150 metres of a road breaching the legal limit for NO2 pollution.

Greenpeace's Road Pollution map shows the pollution levels of motorways and A roads and the locations of schools and nurseries near dangerously polluting roads. Because the road pollution is limited to motorways and A roads Greenpeace's map probably vastly underestimates the number of educational institutions suffering from dangerous air pollution.

The Water Quality of US Streams & Rivers

A new interactive map from the USGS allows you to see whether the water quality of US streams and rivers has improved or decreased over the last few decades. The Water-Quality Changes in the Nation's Streams and Rivers map shows water quality trends in waterways since the beginning of the 1970's.

The colored arrows on the USGS map show which streams and rivers have improved in water quality and which have decreased. You can select to see the water quality changes over four different periods of time using the controls in the map sidebar.

The water quality of the country's streams and rivers are assessed in a number of different constituent groups. These are: water chemistry (nutrients, pesticides, sediment, carbon, and salinity) and aquatic ecology (fish, invertebrates, and algae). You can see how stream and river water quality has changed in each of these groups by selecting them from the side panel.


You can also see how groundwater quality has changed over the decades on another USGS interactive map. About half of the U.S. population relies on groundwater for drinking water. The United States Geological Survey is responsible for the National Water Quality Assessment Project, assessing water-quality conditions and whether these conditions are improving or deteriorating over time.

The results of these changing conditions are available in the USGS interactive map, A Decadal Look at Groundwater Quality. The map shows the concentrations of pesticides, nutrients, metals, and organic contaminants in groundwater and how these have changed over ten years.

Using the map you can select to view the test results for a large number of organic and inorganic constituents. Scaled arrow markers on the map indicate whether the tested aquifers showed an increase or decrease in the selected constituent between the decadal testing. For example, if you select to view the results for chlorine, the arrow markers on the map show that most wells tested have shown an increase in chlorine over the ten years between the two latest tests.

The 2017 Terrorist Attacks Map.

According to Wikipedia's List of Terrorist Incidents in 2017 over 2,000 people have already been killed in terrorist attacks this year. You can see where those terrorist attacks took place on the 2017 Terrorist Attacks map. This map from PeaceTech Lab uses the data from Wikipedia's chronology of terrorist attacks to show where attacks have taken place around the globe.

The locations of terrorist attacks which have taken place this year are shown on the map by colored, scaled markers. The colors of the markers indicate the terrorist group responsible for the attack. The size of the circular markers represent the number of fatalities resulting from the terrorist attacks.

You can also view PeaceTech Lab's 2016 Terrorist Attacks map.

Bear Tracking in Yosemite Park

The Bear Management Team at Yosemite National Park has released a bear tracking map which allows you to follow the progress of three of the park's black bears. The Yosemite Bear Tracker Map displays the position of each bear and three tracks showing their movements over the last 30 days.

If you select a bear's marker on the map you can view details on how far it has traveled today and how far it has traveled over the last 30 days. The actual live positions of the bears is not shown on the map (the data is delayed) for the safety of the bears. As well as allowing you to follow the movements of three of the park's bears the map also shows the position of where bears were hit by vehicles in 2016.


Last year National Geographic attached cameras and tracking collars to two grizzly bears and two black bears inside Yellowstone National Park. They were then able to map the bears' movements inside the park and observe how they find food and interact with their environment.

A Bear’s-Eye View of Yellowstone allows you to watch footage from the four bear-cams and view the bears' tracks as they move around the park. As you scroll down this special interactive presentation from National Geographic the bears' tracks are updated on the map while the bear-cam footage from the currently displayed location plays on top of the map.

Highlights of A Bear's-Eye View of Yellowstone include a black bear taking a short-cut through some people's backyards, a cannibal bear feasting on another bear and a bear's encounter with a pack of wolves.


The Polar Bears International Bear Tracker map allows you to follow the progress of polar bears on and around Hudson Bay. The Bear Tracker map is tracking the movements of fourteen different polar bears.

Each of the polar bears has been fitted with a GPS collar which allows Polar Bears International to track the bears' movements and to show their locations on the Bear Tracker map (with a time delay for the bear's safety). The map also includes a sea-ice layer, which shows the extent of the current sea-ice extent on the bay.

The map includes a time-line which allows you to view the bears' movements since 2013. The time-line also shows the sea-ice extent for each day since 1 Oct 2013.

New York's Mountains of Crime

NYC Crime Trends is a 3D mapped visualization of New York crime data. The application shows three months worth of crime as an elevation layer on top of a map of New York. These new mountains & valleys of New York show where crime is more & less prevalent in the city.

You can view the crime trends in a New York neighborhood simply by clicking on a location on the map. A blue 3D mesh shows the areas where the most crime has taken place, The inset information window provides a line graph of the total number of crimes in the area over a three month period. The 3D mesh actually slowly rises and falls to show the crime trends over those three months. The time of the current map view is indicated on the NYC Crime Trends line graph.

The animated playback of the three months of crime actually plays a little slow. It would be nice if the user could use the line graph to control the date shown on the map for themselves. The map would also benefit from providing an option to turn off the 3D buildings on the map. This would provide a much clearer view of the crime topography overlay.

How Long to Drive?

Isochrone maps are proving very popular this year. In just the first three months of 2017 Maps Mania has featured travel time maps from Isoscope, farfrom.io, walkshed.js and TravelTime. These isochrone maps are now joined by TimeToAnywhere.

TimeToAnywhere is an interactive map which shows you how far you can drive in the UK for different lengths of time. The map is very easy to use. Just click on the map to set your location and you can instantly view an isochrone layer showing the driving times around your selected location. 

The stand out feature of TimeToAnywhere is its speed (drag the marker around the map to see how quickly the isochrone layer updates). However TimeToAnywhere also includes a number of other useful features. These include an option to view the isochrone layer for busy commuting times (when driving times are longer). The map also includes an option to view a route and travel time to a specific location, by dragging a destination marker onto the map.

Mapping ESA's Mission to Mars

The Russian space agency Roscosmos and the European Space Agency plan to search for life on Mars. The ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission will land a rover on Mars to search for bio-signatures of Martian life. The two space agencies have now whittled down the possible landing site of the ExoMars 2020 rover to just two locations on Mars. The two remaining candidate landing sites have been chosen because in the planet's early history they both hosted an abundance of water.

You can explore the ExoMars landing sites for yourself on the ExoMars LSS interactive map. The map shows the location on Mars of the original four proposed landing sites. It now also highlights the remaining two candidate sites.

If you select any of the landing sites on the map you can read an explanation of the type of Martian terrain found at the selected location. You can also view a zoomed in aerial view of each landing site and the landing ellipses where the rover would land. The ExoMars LSS interactive map also provides an explanation of the elevation, latitude and geological constraints that effect the final choice of the ExoMars rover landing site.

The final decision on the landing site for the 2020 mission will not be be made until one year before launch.

The Northern Irish Divide

Dot maps are a great way to visualize racial segregation. They can also be really useful for visualizing religious and political divides. The Detail has released a new interactive dot map which shows how twenty years after the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland Catholics and Protestants still choose to live in separate communities.

The N.I. Region Map uses historical census data to visualize where Catholics and Protestants have lived in Northern Ireland over the last 50 years. The map includes the census results for 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011, which means that you can view a dot map layer visualizing where people of both religions lived in each decade since 1970. By progressing through the different decades it is therefore possible to view how much integration has taken place between the two different religious communities over recent years.

You can read more about the project in The Detail's article, Data mapping highlights Northern Ireland’s divisions ahead of Brexit. The Irish Times is also working with The Detail to explore some of the issues that arise from the new map. A good introduction to the Irish Times' coverage of the map is their article Two tribes: A divided Northern Ireland.

Mapping Melbourne's Safe Spaces

A new interactive map from Free To Be shows locations across Melbourne where women feel threatened and unsafe.

Plan International Australia's Free To Be campaign gathered over 1,300 responses from women in Melbourne highlighting locations in the city where they feel safe or unsafe. The campaign used the CrowdSpot citizen reporting platform to collect women's experiences of Melbourne's streets. Using the interactive map women could add locations where they felt either 'happy' or 'sad' and explain why the location made them feel this way.

The citizen reporting stage of the campaign is now over, so you can no longer contribute to the Free To Be map. However you can now use the map to view the locations throughout the city identified by other women in Melbourne. The locations and experiences added to the map will now also be "shared with the City of Melbourne to help them create a city that includes girls and young women".