A Witch’s Guide to Crater Lake
An exercise in cartographic techniques, A Witch’s Guide to Crater Lake reimagines Oregon’s only National Park using publicly available data from sources such as the US Geological Survey and iNaturalist.
Process
In spite of these fantastical concepts, thorough geospatial analysis was performed in order to display the final result. Data points were aggregated into polygons based on their highest levels of density. For animal sightings, a geographic centroid was determined from these areas.
Designing the map’s hillshade, however, did take some creative thinking to achieve the desired effect. A hillshade was generated using a digital elevation model, exported as a GEOTiff, and edited in graphic design software to simulate a hand drawn appearance.
Purpose
Plants and flowers are symbolized as potion ingredients based on their imagined magical properties. Animal sightings have become locations where one can find a familiar. Geological points of interest within the park are noted as areas of concentrated supernatural energy.