Fantastic Maps

Brazil has managed to cut deforestation in half since 2000. But that's been offset by increasing forest loss in other countries.

Who would have thought that the marriage of two tiny little words - pine from the Latin 'pīnus' meaning "sap, juice" and apple from 'apple' meaning "apple" would have split the UK from the rest of the world way back when it was first recorded in 1398?

And what about the word orange? Or beer? Or bear? Or church? Do our language lands collide or do they coincide? Find out with these eight fun etymology maps complete with terrible puns.

... And simplify American time zones in the process
    

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West Virginia is the most neurotic state, Utah is the most agreeable and the folks of Wisconsin are the country's most extroverted, a new study says.

Click through for a larger version. (Reuben Fischer-Baum)My friend Judy used to always say that whenever she met another Judy, she knew exactly how old that Judy was—to the day.

A while back, I posted in the forums asking for people to help me find a YA book for every single state in the US.

This map, made with data from the 1870 census, shows rates of wealth per capita in the settled United States.

Instead of fighting over water what if each state's boundaries let it get water from one source? Check out the Watershed States of America.

1 grid square = 1 million people

Meet the data treasure trove known as "NOAA View."

Weather geeks, say goodbye to your morning productivity. The data conjurers at NOAA have rolled their latest environmental visualization out of the hanger, and it is bursting with every possible thing you'd want to know about the planet's health, from past to present to worrisome future.

Want to know what the clouds like looked during your city's last nasty storm? The "NOAA View" portal has crisp satellite images stretching 5 years back. Curious where snow and ice have accumulated this year? The frozen stuff is splashed about the globe like splattered white frosting.

This simulation gives an eerily omniscient vantage on the world as it fills.

By age, size, income and race.

The U.S. has 4 percent of the world's population and 34 percent of its Nobel laureates

Every state has a book that it is best known for. Here are the most famous books that take place in every state.

Just about anybody can make a map and slap it up on the internet these days, and that’s a mixed blessing for professional cartographers. On the upside, they’re mostly happy to see more people taking an interest and getting engaged in mapmaking. On the other hand, some of the maps made by amateurs are cringe-inducing mockeries of good cartographic design. And to make things worse — some of them go viral.

But instead of just making snarky comments about these amateur maps to their colleagues on Twitter, cartographers might want to consider the qualities that make maps like this go viral, according to information designer and cartographer Marty Elmer, who runs the popular blog Map Hugger.

Facebook, Google, and—a newspaper?

Two researchers, Mark Graham and Stefano De Stabbata, at the Oxford Internet Institute have depicted the world’s “Internet empires” in a map, below. The map shows each nation’s most popular website, with the size of nations altered to reflect the number of Internet users there.

For decades, Lady Liberty, mother of exiles, stood watch as millions of immigrants arrived in the U.S. in hope of a better life.