A Multitude of Maps

I had so many maps from my previous post Messing Around With Maps that I couldn’t fit them all in one post.  So here are another batch.



How the population of the U.K. would fit in the USA


This interesting map shows the relative population density of the UK and the USA in an interesting way.  Each coloured zone of the USA has the same population as the UK has a population density of 660 per square mile whilst the figure for the USA is only 85 people per square mile.   Britain as a whole is the twelth most overly populated country in the world and if you consider how empty large parts of the country are, then SE England is similar to that of Hong Kong and other places.  In fact as I type this I can’t even see the screen as too many people are in my face!



Where did everyone go?


Half the population of the U.K live within the circle and large parts of the NE and SW in that circle are pretty empty… though I guess they would be packed out by the standards of other places.



Netherlands as a city


I didn’t make this map and I very well know there is no such country as Holland!  But the map is interesting at least.  Rather than having the Netherlands as a relatively small and overcrowded country, imagine it against some of the worlds biggest cities.  Compared to some places it looks quite a serene place to live, which of course as any visitor there knows there are few places better.



A White Christmas?


Bing Crosby might have been dreaming of a White Christmas but dreaming would be all he could do if he lived in Thessaloniki in Greece which sees a White Christmas just 1% of the time.  You’re not much more likely to see snow on this special day much further nother in Paris and London.  Only in Russia and Scandinavia can it be relied upon.   Out of interest, the reason Christmas is associated with being snowy is all down to Charles Dickens.  In his formative years, London had a whole pile of snow each Christmas and he grew up assuming this to be the norm and traditional when in fact it was a blip.  In the 35 years I have lived in the London area, I’ve seen a white Christmas just 2 or 3 times.



Who is taking all those photos?


You can’t move in London for people taking photos.  Mostly it seems to be Chinese and Japanese tourists who seem to take photos of anything and everything.  I once put this theory to the test by pretending to take photos of a totally innoculous building and I soon attracted a small crowed of east Asian tourists doing the same.

Anyway going by the colour coding, the red dots are photos are those uploaded to social media and taken by tourists.  You can see that they stick to relatively small areas of Central London, which in itself is a small area of Greater London.   The blue dots are photos taken by locals and are distributed much more evenly as we’d all rather take a photo of a dog sniffing it’s bum than Big Ben or Buckingham Palace.  Having said that, the yellow dots are where it is unclear if the photos are tourists or locals and as plenty of them are in the parks near Buckingham Palace maybe it could be of a smelly dog and the palace itself.  I don’t I’d snap that!



Who trades with whom?


The map above illustrates the largest trading partner of each country.  So the USA gets most of its gear from China whilst Canada gets most of its stuff from the USA. China buys mostly from Japan.  Most of Eastern Europe still buys from Russia but Russia buys from China.  The Republic of Ireland buys British whilst Britain buys German and the Germans buy French.



Did you see where I put my landmass?


71% of the surface of our planet is covered in water.  With 96.5% of this being covered by sea-water and the remainder in rivers and lakes.  More than 30% of the planet is the Pacific Ocean and it is so big that you can fit every landmass within its surface area.




Dutch Land Reclamation


The Low Countries aren’t so named for nothing.  Much of the landmass is at or below sea level with 26% being under the waterline and another 24% being just 1 metre or 3 feet above the sea.  Being clever and ingenious folks, over hundreds of years the Dutch engineers have gradually drained and reclaimed large tracts of land.  To save you working it out, around 17% of the country is reclaimed land which is good for the Dutch but it will of course have marginally increased the sea-level across the rest of the planet.



The future Middle-East


Someone with either a lot of time on their hands or not afraid of upsetting half the planet came up with this map to show how the Middle-East might appear in the future if various secession movements proved to be successful such as Kurdistan and Baluchistan.   What looks most sad though is that even in this distant and imaginary future, the status of the Palestinians is still undecided.  That kind of sucks that people can’t even imagine it can be sorted?







About Stephen Liddell

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