Cartographic modeling is an integrated sequence of data processing tasks that organize, combine, analyze and display information to answer a question. Cartographic modeling is effective in GIS environments because they rely heavily upon visualization, making it easy to show input and output layers in map form. In many GIS platforms, the sequence of tasks can be created and modified graphically as well. The modeling is visual, intuitive, and requires some knowledge of GIS commands and data preparation, along with curiosity to answer a particular question about the environment. It does not require programming skill. Cartographic modeling has been used in applications to delineate habitats, to solve network routing problems, to assess risk of storm runoff across digital terrain, and to conserve fragile landscapes. Historical roots emphasize manual and later automated map overlay. Cartographic models can take three forms (descriptive, prescriptive and normative). Stages in cartographic modeling identify criteria that meet an overarching goal; collect data describing each criterion in map form; design a flowchart showing data, GIS operations and parameters; implement the model; and evaluate the solution. A scenario to find a suitable site for biogas energy production walks through each stage in a simple demonstration of mechanics.

Over twenty five years ago, Brian Harley (1989, p. 2) implored cartographers to “search for the social forces that have structured cartography and to locate the presence of power – and its effects – in all map knowledge.” In the intervening years, while Harley has become a bit of a touchstone for citational practices acknowledging critical cartography (Edney, 2015), both theoretical understandings of power as well as the tools and technologies that go into cartographic production have changed drastically. This entry charts some of the many ways that power may be understood to manifest within and through maps and mapmaking practices. To do so, after briefly situating work on cartography and power historically, it presents six critiques of cartography and power in the form of dialectics. First, building from Harley’s earlier work, it defines a deconstructivist approach to mapping and places it in contrast to hermeneutic phenomenological approaches. Second, it places state-sanctioned practices of mapping against participatory and counter-mapping ones. Third, epistemological understanding of maps and their affects are explored through the dialectic of the map as a static object versus more processual, ontogenetic understandings of maps. Finally, the chapter concludes by suggesting the incomplete, heuristic nature of both the approaches and ideas explored here as well as the practices of critical cartography itself. Additional resources for cartographers and GIScientists seeking to further explore critical approaches to maps are provided.

Advances in technological approaches and tools to capture geospatial data have contributed to a vast collection of applications and enabled capacity for new programs, functions, products, workflows, and whole national-level spatial data infrastructure. In this entry, such outcomes and implications are described, focusing on developmental changes in specific application areas such as land use & land cover inventory, land parcel administration, and business, as well as examples from federal agencies, including the US Geological Survey, the Census Bureau, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the US Department of Agriculture. These examples illustrate the diverse ways that the dramatic changes in geospatial data capture methods and approaches have affected workflows within agencies and have spatially empowered millions of users and the general public. For additional information on specific technical changes, see Part 1: