Software for density map

[William Bagwell]

Back in the mid to late 80s someone in the South East created a cave density map of TAG. Out line of all three states with a small dot representing the approximate location of each cave. Not only stunning to look at, it was a great tool for visualizing how caves follow patterns is some areas. Need to go look in the barn and see if I can find mine...

While the original was likely laboriously done by hand one dot at a time, was wondering if there are tools to do this today? Input a list of latitude / longitude coordinates and output a cool map. Obviously you would want to dither the output a bit, at least for more sensitive locations. Could probably do this simply by rounding off a few decimal places.

Naturally free is best even a simple script would be of help.
William

[NZcaver]

Welcome to the forum. Did you mean something which looks like this?



It details karst areas and not specifically individual caves, but I'm guessing a similar process could be used for either.

[John Lovaas]

was wondering if there are tools to do this today? Input a list of latitude / longitude coordinates and output a cool map.

WIlliam-

If you have the location data, you can plot it via Google Earth or ESRI ArcExplorer, which are both free to use, but require an active internet connection.

There's a free, slightly clunky GIS'ish piece of software called MicroDEM. Before I owned a copy of ArcGIS(and before Google even existed) I used it to plot line and point data on aerial photos, topo maps, etc.

I've seen people plot point data in Microsoft Excel.

[Bob Thrun]

Back in the mid to late 80s someone in the South East created a cave density map of TAG. Out line of all three states with a small dot representing the approximate location of each cave.

I think that was Steve Attaway. He wrote his own software. I don't remember what he used for plotting hardware. One problem might be that Alabama uses Public Land Survey coordinates (quarter of a quarter of a section, etc.) rather than latitude-longitude.

[batrotter]

Here's a karst map, although not a cave density map:

http://www.nature.nps.gov/nckri/map/maps/index.html

[trogman]

I think that was Steve Attaway. He wrote his own software. I don't remember what he used for plotting hardware. One problem might be that Alabama uses Public Land Survey coordinates (quarter of a quarter of a section, etc.) rather than latitude-longitude.

In the old days, that was certainly true. (And that might have been what you meant) However, most of the caves turned into the ACS nowadays are located with Lat and Long. Many of the old ones have since been converted to Lat and Long also, although some of the conversions left something to be desired.

I remember seeing such a map in the NSS Convention Guidebook, from about 1998 or so? I'm not sure who put that together, but it showed the TAG states only.

Trogman

[William Bagwell]

There's a free, slightly clunky GIS'ish piece of software called MicroDEM.

Thanks all! John nailed exactly what I was looking for. MicroDEM works and I was even able to install it in CrossOver on a Linux computer. Still need play with it a bit more but already have a usable output.

William

[John Lovaas]

There's a free, slightly clunky GIS'ish piece of software called MicroDEM.

Thanks all! John nailed exactly what I was looking for. MicroDEM works and I was even able to install it in CrossOver on a Linux computer. Still need play with it a bit more but already have a usable output.
William

Glad you got it working, William. It is fairly stable (for me) in WinXP; I started using it back in the days of Win95, and it wasn't always happy under Win95.

It has some impressive fly-through and terrain modelling features, as well as line-of-sight and topographic profile tools. Pretty good free piece of software, actually. I wonder if the author does much with it anymore.