Environmental Cartographic Resources Available from Ball State University Libraries

Celebrating Earth Day: Ball State University Libraries Offers Cartographic Resources for the Study of the Environment

Ball State University Libraries includes many cartographic resources for researchers studying issues of the environment. Hundreds of maps about numerous environmental topics are available, and many of the books and atlases offer unique charts, images, illustrations, and other graphics as well as numerous topical maps.

Researchers can find flood plain maps for numerous areas and topographic maps for areas around the world in the newly named GIS Research and Map Collection on the second floor of Bracken Library. The GRMC offers soils surveys and maps from counties around the country, Gap Analysis electronic resources for land cover, forest types, and other factors, maps of important farmlands in counties around the United States, watershed and ground water maps, natural gas and other energy maps, and national and state park and forest maps. Maps of ecoregions of numerous states and ecosystems for wildlife are also available from the GRMC. Researchers can use maps of threatened areas around the world from the GRMC: Africa Threatened, Australia Under Siege, and Millennium in Maps: World Biodiversity. The GRMC includes satellite image maps of the Amazon Basin, maps of the Okavango Delta, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Researchers can also use dozens of maps focusing on world wildlife.

Other environmental atlases and resources can be found in the Atlas Collection, the General Collection, the Reference Collection, and the Science-Health Science Library. The Educational Resources Collection includes environmental books and atlases directed at a younger audience like the Atlas of Endangered Species and the Atlas of Threatened Cultures.

For a more complete list of the available cartographic resources in University Libraries, please review the environmental subject guide on the GRMC Web page at http://www.bsu.edu/library/article/0,,59405--,00.html.

Maps from the GRMC can be circulated for two weeks or longer. Atlases circulate for four weeks or longer. Please contact the GRMC at 765/285-1097 for more information about these resources.