Review

Author(s): P. M. Mather
Review by: P. M. Mather
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 158, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 95-96
Published by: geographicalj
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060037
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 REVIEWS
National Geographic Atlas of the World (6th
edition).
Washington: National Geographic Society, 1990,
133 pp. n.p. ISBN 0 87044 399 2
In a cartographic world where developments are
taking place with bewildering speed, it is reassuring
to see in this atlas the familiar distinctive style that
its successive editions have employed for many
years. It is a style with which many users are
comfortable and which appears still to stand the test
of time. Accompanied now by the use of well-chosen
and visually very appealing examples of satellite
imagery, this atlas is essentially a very attractive
publication.
As always with National Geographic products, it
is very well endowed with geographical names on
the main plates, these being backed up by a
comprehensive index of some 150000 entries.
Countries and their primary administrative divi-
sions are very clearly portrayed, though policy for
naming the latter appears confused: for example
Dornod province in Mongolia is translated into
'Eastern', whereas La Libertad province in Peru is
retained in the original official Spanish.
Understandably, perhaps, the Americas are gen-
erally covered by plates at larger scales than
elsewhere. These plates, plus those covering the
Pacific islands, are particularly good, as are many of
the small-scale plates relating to the earth, oceans,
and worlds beyond. Elsewhere, coverage is rarely
less than adequate, but a few questions begin to
creep in. For example, in an area of great topical
interest, the atlas does not show Iraq's substantially
revised borders with both Saudi Arabia andJordan,
borders which were realigned as long ago as 1984.
There are also two general points which perhaps
reduce the otherwise excellent visual appeal. Firstly,
there is sometimes an insufficient differentiation in
type between places of quite different importance.
Thus in plate 55, large cities such as Liverpool and
Manchester do not stand out as they should from
the smaller towns surrounding them. Secondly, the
larger-scale urban region plates (such as plate 68),
though a valuable inclusion in principle, become
reduced to a rather uniform blandness through a
lack of even rudimentary topography.
Yet the fundamental test of an atlas remains the
extent to which it is effective as a reference work. I
recently needed to locate a settlement named
Majuro. Not one of half a dozen comparable works
which were to hand included such a settlement, but
this atlas does. Since Majuro is in fact the principal
settlement of the Marshall Islands, an entity now
with its own seat in the United Nations, it is
important that it should be included. That this atlas
does so represents just one of many good reasons
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95
why it should not be absent from the shelves of any
respectable library.
P. J. WOODMAN
Introductory readings in Geographic Infor-
mation Systems. Edited by DONNA J. PEUQUET
and DUANE F. MARBLE.
London: Taylor and Francis, 1990. 371 pp. ?18.00
(pbk). ISBN 0 85066 857 3
This collection of papers is divided into five parts:
'What is a Geographic Information System?',
'Examples of Practical Applications', 'Operations
and Problems of Building a Database', 'GIS
Internals - Data Representation and Analysis
Techniques', and 'GIS Design and Evaluation'.
Each part begins with a brief introduction. Much of
the material is relatively ancient, by GIS standards,
mostly dating from the mid-1980s; however, this is
not necessarily a condemnation but a reflection on
the rapidity with which the technology is devel-
oping. The book is intended as 'a supplementary
reader for use in an introductory, upper-division or
graduate level course... as well as for practising
professionals'. Within its pages the reader can
expect to find 'a balanced sampling of written
works that cover important aspects of the basic
principles involved in GIS'. The editors feel that,
although some parts may become dated they
nevertheless illustrate principles and methods of
analysis.
One of the several problems faced by the editors
of a volume such as this is the need for balance.
Newcomers to the field of GIS need a survey
covering the main principles and applications rather
than a random selection of specialized articles. The
editors fall somewhere in the middle of this range.
Not everyone will agree with Peuquet and
Marble's selection of topics for inclusion in an
introductory reader. This, however, is not un-
expected, and for many people the collection under
review will provide at least a basis that can be
augmented by selected reading of text books and
journals. The gaps that exist include spatial analysis
and the problems involved in using remotely sensed
data within a GIS. Nevertheless, the core areas of
GIS are well covered, and the inclusion of 'his-
torical' papers is a reminder to the reader of the
pace of developments in the field. As the editors
point out in their introduction, ARC/INFO is the
GIS equivalent of the airline industry's DC-3.
What, they ask, will be the equivalent of the first
commercial jet? One hopes it will be the Boeing 707
that they identify as the role model, rather than the
de Havilland Comet, which flew for a while in the
early 1950s before developing a habit of crashing
96 REVIEWS
into the Mediterranean. This reader, then, ad-
equately fulfils its purpose and, at the price, it is
undoubtedly a bargain.
P. M. MATHER
Census of India 1981: Census Atlas, National
Volume. Direction B. K. RoY
New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General, India,
1988. 212 pp. ?41.98. Reg. No. 2667-101-E'87-
1500-89.
People are a country's greatest asset, but for India
they provide its greatest problems, the extent and
nature of which are evidenced in the comprehensive
demographic profiles presented in this third decen-
nial National Census Atlas. The transformation of
the wide range of tabulated census data into an
integrated picture of the people of the country in
respect of their distribution, economic, social and
cultural characteristics, conveyed through effective
cartographic forms, demands both careful planning
of themes and technical expertise in the methods of
presentation. In both respects there is much to
commend, and there are only a few maps for which
the concept or the cartography is open to criticism.
The structure of the atlas throughout is to have
each theme mapped on one plate with, on the facing
page, a text and any necessary statistical tables that
draws attention to the salient features of the map but
does not venture into interpretation. A general
section prefaces the main body of the atlas, and after
an overview of the administrative divisions con-
cludes with four plates on the scale of 1: 8M on
'physical aspects'. Although intended as a back-
ground to the central purpose of the atlas, they
merit attention by geographers as succinct, in-
dependent statements. A clear layer-coloured map of
'Relief and drainage basins' is complemented by a
well-written commentary. The useful summary of
India's forest types is poorly served by the map
(Plate 6), on which only four weakly differentiated
green tints are used to accommodate the 14 types of
forest, and identification of types depends upon
reference to bounding lines and checking the
numbered areas with the key. By skilled use of
colours, dots and hatching, with good line work, the
19 sub-orders of soils and the 103 sub-order
associations whose characteristics are given in the
text are clearly depicted on Plate 7. The fourth
introductory map, 'Microclimate and drought
areas' concerns a basic parameter for life in India.
Again well-chosen colours combined with line and
dot shading provide a pleasing portrayal of the
distribution of the climatic types and moisture
indexes, based on C. W. Thornthwaite's water
balance scheme, and of drought-prone areas identi-
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fied by the Irrigation and Central Water Commis-
sions.
The second section on 'Demographic Structure
and Trends' comprises exactly half of the atlas. The
distribution of population in each of the five 'zones'
into which the sub-continent is divided is shown on
the scale of 1:3'3M by a combination of dots, for the
numbers of the rural population, and of geometrical
symbols, for the size and class of urban centres; both
are superimposed on a choropleth map of general-
ized densities per square kilometre. The keys provide
a cartographical eccentricity in that although the
colours are constant for particular densities on all
five maps their placing in each key is in order of
area coverage on the particular map and not in
order of a scale of progressive densities. A pictorial
representation of the rural house types in the several
zones is an unexpected but interesting set of
illustrations of the varieties of vernacular buildings
that are to be found within India. Variations on the
theme of population at the national level are
portrayed on maps at the scale of 1:8M by graphs
and choropleths as appropriate and include densities
at the last three census years, the growth of
population at decadal intervals since 1901 and, for
both rural and urban areas, fertility, birth and
death rates and distribution of population by age
groups and sex ratios. Urban trends are traced in 18
maps and comprise portrayal of the urban popu-
lation and its growth since 1901 with, for each of the
zones, size classes of urban centres, their rates of
growth and new towns established. The mapping of
the hierarchy of Class I towns, the concept and
structure of Standard Urban Areas with detailed
large-scale (but scale unspecified) presentation of
the components of the top 12 of those with a
population of over one million, and the national
picture of levels of urbanization concludes the
urban section. Economic aspects are depicted in a
series of maps showing the distribution of main,
marginal and non-workers, both rural and urban,
cultivators and agricultural labourers and, by
showing the data for females in colour and for males
in black hatching, the choropleth map readily
presents both elements simultaneously. The final
section on 'Socio-Cultural Aspects' deals first with
out-migration and in-migration, literacy in males
and females, major religions and the physically
handicapped population. There then follow plates
that reveal the distribution of Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes and the record of their literacy
and employment. It is to be regretted that the last
map in the atlas, 'India: Physio-Geographic
Regions' is technically poor and also seems to serve
no useful purpose. Plotted on the district level
administrative map the three orders of region are
simply stated, their validity is not argued and their