Search

Increased attention to global climate change in recent years has resulted in a wide array of maps and geovisualizations that forecast various scenarios. Since many consequences of climate change are inherently geographic in nature, effective cartographic representations that depict these risks are valuable for planning and mitigation purposes. In particular, sea-level rise resulting from climate change calls attention to the numerous representation issues that warrant consideration for hazard and risk mapping in general, including categorizing and representing risk, selecting an appropriate level of realism, and displaying potential impacts of a hazard on human populations as well as on the natural and built environments. Using examples of potential inundation from sea-level rise at global, regional, and local scales, the authors propose a conceptual framework of key cartographic considerations for maps, Web-based mashups, and geovisualizations that depict risk. The cartographic framework presented here may be extended to other risks of an ambiguous or fuzzy nature and may be used to organize key future research areas for hazard or risk mapping in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future sea level rise caused by climate change would disrupt the physical processes, economic activities, and social systems in coastal regions. Based on a hypothetical global sea level increase of one to six meters, we developed GIS methods to assess and visualize the global impacts of potential inundation using the best available global datasets. After susceptible areas were delineated, we estimated that the size of the areas is between 1.055 (one meter) to 2.193 million km² (six meters). Population in the susceptible areas was estimated to range from 108 (one meter) to 431 million (six meters) people. Among the seven land-cover types in the susceptible areas, forest and grassland account for more than 60 percent for all the increments of sea level rise. A suite of interactive visualization products was also developed to understand and communicate the ramifications of potential sea level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]