Three techniques for printing your own topo maps will be discussed here. I’ll go over the first two superfically, reserving most of our time for learning to use Quantum GIS (QGIS).
Photo Editors — this can be a quick and dirty way of printing print-ready maps available online using software already on your computer.
QGIS – If you want to do more complicated things with a map a full-fledged GIS program allows you to create maps that are fully customized to your needs.
Have you been using your Smartphone for navigation lately? Wondering if it makes any sense to keep bringing along that old GPS (so say nothing of a map and compass…)? Check out my article on Trip Planning for Garmin GPS units with Google Earth.
Google Earth Pro: http://www.google.ca/earth/download/gep/agree.html and use GEPFREE as the install key if asked.
GIS – a Geographic Information System is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of spatial or geographical data.
Layers – Image and GIS editing programs use layers, similar to the layers of paper on a desk. Layers that are above cover layers that are below.
Transparency – Transparencies in layers allow you to see layers below.
DEM – digital elevation model. This data is collected from aerial photographs (older) and satellite imagery.
NTS – National Topographic System, an indexing system that organises all of Canada’s maps into an alphanumeric system.
Canvec – all-metric maps based on the most recent imagery, terrain features (e.g. glaciation, ground cover, buildings, roads, etc.), and DEM data. See Toporama below.
Toporama – print ready Canvec data. These maps are clear and current. The biggest problem is that the imagery and spot elevations are mostly computer generated, and haven’t had detailed attention from a (human) map maker required to produce a truly fine map.
TRIM — BC mapping data. The original TRIM program, consisting of 7027 digital files, was completed in December 1996. For several reasons, it was necessary for the data to be updated. The map compilation photography was as much as 15 years out of date. The Forest Practices Code put greater demand on increased information content for features such as roads, stream, forest openings and such. This lead to the development of the TRIM II program. Like Canvec data this data is largely computer generated and often has major problems, e.g. ice cliffs on flat glaciers (Burnie, Bugaboos).
Collared/Uncollared – A map collar is the white space and information surrounding the map imagery including things like map name, declination details, legend, etc. It is commonly included on print-ready maps (e.g. when using a photo editor to print your map). When using a GIS program a collar is an annoyance that gets in the way of stitching and is complicated to remove accurately. For this reason, Uncollared map imagery is what you’ll want when using a GIS program.
QGIS and AcrGIS – popular GIS programs. ArcGIS is the industry standard but expensive. QGIS is an extremely powerful free program that is gaining traction, Parks Canada being one major user.
Projection – To make a map of a spherical earth 2-dimensional, a “projection” is required.
UTM – The Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) conformal projection uses a 2-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system to give locations on the surface of the Earth. Like the traditional method of latitude and longitude, it is a horizontal position representation, i.e. it is used to identify locations on the Earth independently of vertical position. However, it differs from that method in several respects.
The UTM system is not a single map projection. The system instead divides the Earth into sixty zones, each being a six-degree band of longitude, and uses a secant transverse Mercator projection in each zone.
Map Datum – the two map data used in Canada are NAD27 and NAD83. The different map data use different UTM grids that are slightly different. Your maps should always use the latest NAD83 UTM grid.
By far the easiest way to print maps, using caltopo.com is as simple as going to the website and following directions.
You can use a photo editor, e.g. Mac’s iPhoto or Windows’ Paint do do a quick and dirty map job so long as you have them in TIFF format. If you want to edit PDF files or stitch together multiple maps then a more sophisticated photo editing program that does layer editing, such as The GIMP, is what you need. These are the basic steps; see sections below for details.
Download printable mapsheets that include UTM gridlines.
Ensure that the image’s DPI are correct (300 dpi is typical).
Crop the image so that it contains the information you want and has the correct dimensions for the type of paper you want to use.
Unzip the files you’ve downloaded from NRCan. If you have more than one you will need to merge them. Open each file individually, select/copy and then paste into a new image file. The exact workflow of this procedure varies with different photo editors.
When you create your new image file you will need to choose a size based on the paper size you choose. The easiest is to print onto 11×17 (tabloid) or 8.5×11 (letter) sized paper, but your local print shop will have much larger sizes available if you are printing maps for larger areas, e.g. a ski traverse, long hike, or canoe trip.
Ensure that your photo editor is set to print at the correct DPI for the image you’ve downloaded (e.g. 300 dpi). If you want to make a bigger map then you need to scale it appropriately. E.g. to turn a 50k into a 25k map you need to change the DPI from 300 dpi to 150 dpi.
There’s a good chance you’ll want to label your image with feature names or even trails. Just use the photo editor’s text tool and/or line drawing or pencil drawing tool with a contrasting colour. Play with the line width so that it’s not so thin you can’t see it but not so thick it obscures your map. It’s next to impossible to import GPX trails accurately onto an image using a photo editor; this is what a GIS program like QGIS is for.
If you just want to crop a portion of a single mapsheet for your map then this is straightforward. Just open the file, use your photo editor’s crop tool to crop a portion of the map, check to make sure it fits your desired paper size (some trimming, or using a larger paper size, might be necessary).
2) Select the areas you wish to stitch together from both maps, taking note of the pixel dimensions of each. Add these dimensions together, with a bit extra length and width to make working with it easier.
5) Erase the collar from one of the images in one of the layers (e.g. select -> delete). With NTS maps this will not be exact since NTS maps don’t overlap at all, and the map imagery is angled slightly. Do the best you can.
You can order prints via online printers such as Staples Copy & Print Centre or visit your local print shop. In Canmore Bow Valley Basics and Bow Valley Business Services both do this. In Revelstoke, Salmon Arm, Enderby and Vernon, Lakeside Printing might work for you. In Nelson and Trail, Hall Printing has online document upload and printing services.
This article describes how to create and print customized Canadian Topographic (topo) maps using free digital topographic map information made available on the Internet by the Government of Canada (NRCan) and the free Quantum GIS (QGIS) computer application. QGIS can also be used to create maps from other free or commercial digital map information such as Open Street Map or US nautical charts (Canadian digital nautical charts are available but not free) but that is not covered in here.
QGIS is free Geographic Information System (GIS) software that runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Because QGIS will seamlessly join map files and has a Print Composer that enables map scale, area displayed and rotation angle to be specified, custom maps can be created containing just the area of interest without regard for standard topo map sheet boundaries or orientation. This is very useful when a large format plotter isn’t available to print full size map sheets as just the area of interest can be printed on standard letter or legal paper sizes using a normal home or office printer. It also facilitates the production of coastal or trail strip maps showing just the immediate area around the coastline or trail for kayaking or hiking.
For maps files to be seamlessly joined, they must be georeferenced and have no collars (borders). Paper topo maps can be scanned and then edited to eliminate collars and georeferenced with some effort, but NRCan and GeoBC have made it easy by providing the freely downloadable Toporama 1:50,000 raster map series. The Toporama map files are indexed by the National Topographic System grid, are already georeferenced (GeoTIFF or GeoPDF), collarless, have no grid overlay, and are available in either UTM or Lat/Long projections. For kayaking and hiking purposes, the UTM projection would generally be the best choice as a 1 km UTM grid, which is very useful for navigation, can easily be overlaid on the map. The Toporama maps are based on the most recent NRCan CanVec vector topographic information database and a new edition is released twice a year so they are about as up to date as Canadian Gov’t topo maps can be.
GeoBC’s 1:20000 TRIM GeoTIFF maps have just been made publicly available. Their Topographic Map Viewer, which has a zoomable map of BC, is a good way of figuring out which mapsheets you want exactly, but currently only GeoPDF (collared) files are available this way. For the time being you need to download GeoTIFFs manually at http://pub.data.gov.bc.ca/datasets/177864/tif/.
NRCan also provide a publicly available Toporama Web Map Service (WMS) on the Internet. QGIS can load any required Canadian Topographic map data from the Toporama WMS directly. The advantage is that topo maps for any area in Canada can be directly accessed via QGIS without needing to identify, download and store local GeoTIFF map files on the QGIS workstation. Also, the map layers are individually accessible in case that is of value. The disadvantage is that high speed Internet access is required while working in QGIS and accessing the WMS is slower than using local map files. The Toporama WMS can supply many projections but UTM would generally be the best choice for kayaking and hiking.
The WMS and downloadable map files appear to use different styles so there may be a preference for one or the other. At the current time, several of the Toporama WMS layers, including the Feature Names layer are not scaled correctly for larger scale maps (like 1:50000) so their text or content is too large and obscures other map features. This is not the case with the downloadable Toporama map files which appear to have all features properly scaled for 1:50000. It is possible to use both map files and the WMS at the same time as long as the file layer is in front of the WMS layer, this could be useful to fill in around the edges of a map file without going to the effort of downloading adjacent maps.
Assuming a PC and Internet connection are available, Canadian topo maps can be created with no cost other than some time and effort, unless paper maps are required. If paper maps are required, an available printer can be used with any associated paper and ink or toner costs; or PDF maps can be created and sent to a commercial printing service such as Staples Copy & Print Centre. Because topo maps are intended to be viewed in colour, map features on monochrome printouts can be difficult to distinguish so colour printing is very desirable.
Today we only have time to cover the extreme basics of QGIS and GIS. Here’s an outline of what we’re going to cover.
1) Make sure that QGIS is installed as well as Google Earth.
Tool buttons (horizontal top, vertical left) – contain quick access to various tools and functions for adding layers, editing, etc.
Map view window – shows the current layers you have loaded into your project.
4) Adjusting layer height – do this by dragging and dropping your layers in the layer window. You can also rename layers and set properties such as transparency in this window.
5) Adding another layer – Vector Layer. First, create a path in Google Earth that wanders around the streets of . Then save this path as a KML file (NOT KMZ!). Right click on the layer and select Properties. Now browse through the properties that you can adjust. The most important are Style and Labels. Each category has a variety of settings that you can mess with.
QGIS can also be configured to load map information on the fly via the Internet using the WMS protocol, so downloading map files isn’t required. This is handy but not essential and replaces the above steps.
Select 0 WMS-Toporama for all layers, or expand the second item +1 Toporama to select one or more specific layers. The WMS will respond much more quickly if all the required layers are selected at once as one QGIS layer rather than individually as separate QGIS layers. Separate layers allow rendering order to be controlled (determine which layers are on top).
If selecting multiple separate layers for QGIS, select the next layer or layers, ensure the CRS is correct (there seems to be a bug and QGIS may hang if this isn’t correct), click Add and repeat as required. In the current QGIS release (1.8.0), to keep the CRS when adding multiple separate layers, select the new layer(s) before unselecting the previous layer(s).
Under Recently used coordinate reference systems, verify that the highlighted CRS matches the loaded map layers. For most of BC/Alberta the CRS should be NAD83 / UTM zone 11N.
A QGIS Project can have multiple Print Composers defined. In most cases, a separate one would probably be defined for each map page to be printed. Also, a Print Composer can have more than one map defined so an inset overview map could be added to a sheet or a single sheet could have multiple small maps on it, etc.
Item Properties -> Map, set the Rotation (in degrees) to maximize the coastline shown on the page. Start by estimating the required rotation and adjust as required.
Set Coordinate precision to 0.
This parses the UTM information to three digits to look like MGRS format. It may or may not work for you without some tweaking.
Click on the centre of the area to be printed, the Coordinate Capture panel should now display the Longitude, Latitude and Easting, Northing (UTM) coordinates for the centre of the map. The more common coordinate order is Latitude, Longitude and Northing so depending on what they are being used for, the coordinate order may need to be swapped.
To determine the UTM zone, Settings -> Project properties -> Coordinate Reference System (CRS) -> Recently used coordinate reference systems, the project CRS will be highlighted in this section and, for a UTM CRS, should list the UTM zone.
Use the captured coordinates, UTM zone and date to determine the grid declination (angle between magnetic north and grid north) and its annual change. NRCan’s online calculator is exactly what you need: http://www.geomag.nrcan.gc.ca/calc/mdcal-en.php. For more details you can also check out How to Determine Magnetic Declination Information for a Topographic Map.
Use text and/or arrows to document the grid declination, the year for which it was determined and the annual change. Documenting the grid convergence angle is probably also a good idea.
Open the QGIS generated PDFs and print them. Ensure that automatic scaling, shrinking or fit to page are not enabled, if they are, the map scale will not be correct.
If the PDF page size is larger than the available printer paper size, the Adobe Reader print function using the Poster options (click the Poster button in the Adobe Reader print dialogue) can split it up onto multiple sheets of paper which can be taped or glued together if a single large sheet is required.
I met Tom Wolfe for the first time when I joined him on a trip to Sorcerer Lodge in April 2018. It was one of the most interesting and enjoyable trips that I have been on. Tom kept us up to date with organizational planning and schedules, and everything was well organized for the departure date. The transfers were smooth and coordinated. Tom and the team were great at including everyone in the discussions and planning, and were always happy to answer questions and provide teaching. The late-season trip was blessed with great snow but the rapidly warming temperatures and fluctuating snow conditions presented quite a few challenges. I felt very confident with Tom's route choices and his attention to safety. The group was made up of skiers and boarders with varying skill levels from intermediate to advanced, and Tom was very good at supporting all of us individually as well as helping us to function as a group. I am very much looking forward to my next trip with Tom.