How accurate are world maps?

Don�t be too sure that the atlas you are referring to gives you the right map of a particular area! Even the newest redrawn maps are finding it hard to cope up with developmental, infrastructural and environmental changes taking place around the world today. The more vivid the atlas is the greater problem it faces.

Consider China for instance where the mushrooming expansion of the port city of Shanghai seems most unbelievable, structures such as the Donghai bridge, at more than 20 miles long, the longest cross-sea bridge in the world.

Mick Ashworth, the editor-in-chief of �The Times Atlas of The World� with reference to China is quoted to have said:

China is a phenomenal challenge for a cartographer, It now has more than 100 cities with more than one million people.




Environmental changes also play a major role in the changing atlases, for example the dramatic shrinking of two of the world’s biggest inland water bodies, the Aral Sea in central Asia and Lake Chad in Africa. Coral reefs destroyed or degraded. Tropical forests cleared away as well as the changing area under �protected lands.�

The Aral Sea has shrunk by 75 per cent since 1967, largely because of large-scale water extraction to irrigate cotton growing, in a project of the former Soviet Union, which proved disastrous. Lake Chad has shrunk by 95 per cent since 1963, because of water extraction for a growing population, overgrazing by cattle, and rainfall decline. So as of now the new Times Atlas of The World is trying hard to be more exact even as the world continues to change.

Source: The Independant
Tags: Cartographer, The times atlas of the world, Environmental changes, Changing world, Travel