Naturescape Gallery presents "Cartographies of Arctic Change" by Greg Fiske

Maps are essential to telling the story of our changing world. Cartographer Greg Fiske combines science and art to create some of the most spectacular images of our home, planet Earth. In this medium of cartography, Greg’s work gives a birds-eye view of our world that bridges the gap between facts and emotions, not only helping the general public to understand complex information about the impact of climate change but also assist climate scientists with the crucial visual information to address ways to combat it.

In his time at the Woodwell Climate Center, Fiske and his colleague Christina Shintani, have worked on maps detailing forest carbon in the United States, global drought forecasts, fire detections in the Amazon Rainforest, and Arctic communities located on permafrost ground.

According to Fiske, “cartography isn’t one profession, it’s a collection of professions”. A modern cartographer is a data analyst, a statistician, a designer, a programmer, a storyteller, all rolled into one. Skills from each profession, and a healthy curiosity about a hundred other subjects, are required to create maps that are informative, attention-grabbing, and intuitive to read.

Fiske began his journey into cartography via the world of computer coding through his high school computer lab. With the guidance from mentors, Greg later picked up other skills, first learning how to apply coding to geospatial data and then how to display that data visually, and as you will see in his Naturescape Gallery exhibit, make it beautiful and attention-grabbing.

*On Saturday, October 17th at 1pm join Greg Fiske for his program, “Putting Science on the Map”, an exploration of commonly used tools and techniques for making beautiful maps, as well as the challenges, success stories and failures, faced in nearly two and half decades of making maps for Woods Hole scientists.