HOW TO READ TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS // Basic Land Navigation Part 1

a map and compass are essential to any hiking adventure but even more important is knowing how to actually use these in this video we're going to learn how to read topographic maps so this is the first part of a series on basic land navigation we're going to learn how to read a topographic map and work our way up to using a compass and even triangulating our position so let's get started on topographic maps so the first thing we're going to look at is what exactly is a map and maps are defined as diagrammatic representations of an area of land or sea showing physical features and the important thing to remember with a map is it's a two-dimensional model of the three-dimensional world the only true model of the earth is the globe and you can't really carry a globe with you on the trail in your pocket so cryptographers have come up with different ways to represent the earth and none of the models are perfect because we're taking at three dimensions and putting it on two dimensions there's always going to be some level of distortion either you get funny shapes looking like this or when they try to rectify for it land masses look bigger than what they actually are so there's no perfect way to represent three dimensions on two dimensions but for our purposes in hiking a map is a great tool so one of the classic resources for learning map and compass is a book by a Burin Kallstrom called the expert with map and compass and what he does is he has these five DS that he goes over they're definitely different than the five DS of dodgeball so bjorn celts drums five DS of map reading our description details Direction distances and designations and today we're going to go over descriptions and details and I'll do another video or two on the last three [Music] this is a standard USGS topographic map that I downloaded from the internet and it has a great deal of descriptions so the first is the title you'll notice this is the North Elbe quadrangle for New York in Essex County and it's the seven and a half minute series seven and a half minute deals with the scale of the map and the other one the other wordings give us an idea of where this map is from then we look at what's called the map margins and it's all of the white space that goes around a map and it gives us a lot of information about when the map was published and different things on the map so let's take a deeper dive into specifically the lower part of this map so the first thing we have at this map is the dates and the USGS does a great job with dates they give you a bunch of detail of when they actually surveyed certain topographic features on the map they also give you an overall date of when the map was published so this one was 2019 and the dates are important because things can change roads can change trails can change regulations can change private public boundaries can change so you always want to have the most up-to-date map you can have the next part that's important is to look at the declination which goes hand-in-hand with date because declination can actually change over time it's the difference between true north and magnetic north and magnetic north actually drifts over time so knowing the date is important for declination we're going to go into declination in great detail when we go over one of the other five DS which is direction next up is the scale of the map and again we're going to go into a little more detail when we go into distances which is one of buren Kallstrom five DS but this gives you an idea of what an inch equates to on the map as opposed to the real world and understand distances on the map and finally it gives you the location the USGS does a really good job they have what are called quadrangles and you can see right here are the quadrangles that are adjacent to our quadrangle so if we wanted to travel off the side of this map we would know that we you need to get number five quadrangle which is Keene Valley so it gives you an idea of where it is in New York State and relationship to the rest of the state and the adjacent quadrangles USGS maps also are UTM based and they'll give you your UTM coordinates in the Easterling and also northing and also your latitude and longitude at the boundaries of the map and the details are all of the things printed on the map so we have different colors that represent different features some are pretty intuitive Blue is aquatic features think water blue major vegetation is green that makes sense white is a little bit different could be used for meadows or rock and boulder fields places that are our absent of major vegetation they could be without trees it could be boulder fields with no vegetation whatsoever or it could be like a grassland or a farmland black is reserved for human-made structures and place names red our survey lines boundaries of the park that's important for private versus public property to understand where that boundary is also highways are typically in red Brown are reserved for what are called contour lines which tells us the elevation and it's a good segue into the next section [Music] coming back to remembering that a map is nothing more than a two-dimensional representation of the three-dimensional world we have the world that looks like this to us Mountains vegetation and a map is simply trying to put that into a two-dimensional space so that looks like something like this so if we go back to here we see Mount Marcy mount skylight we see haystack over here and we can see this corresponding Peaks over here we have Mount Mercy Mount skylight here's haystack so it's really just trying to make that three-dimensional world fit into a two-dimensional piece of paper so let's take a look at a very basic topographic map the first thing I'd like to point out is that contour lines will always form a circle you may not see the circle on the map but they're always form a circle if the map were bigger for example this contour line actually probably comes out like this to form that circle but because where the map is cuts it may cut off that circle the next thing we're going to look at or what call are called index contour lines these are every fifth contour line and they're always going to be a little bit darker and typically they will also have a unit associated with them whether it's meters or feet it depends on the map next we have what are called intermediate contour lines these are the lines that fall in between the index lines and because the index lines are every fifth contour there are four intermediate contour lines between each index and these two things together create our different features as the contour lines get closer together that means you're going into a steeper area and as they get farther apart like here that means it's a little bit flatter and we'll go into a lot of detail when we take a look at the different features next up is the contour interval and this is something that we have to figure out or sometimes it's actual in the margin you can look it up but it's pretty easy to figure out the contour interval is nothing more than the difference between contours and the easiest way to figure that out is by taking your elevations on your indexes taking the difference in dividing by five and the reason we divide by five is because we have five contour lines between each index so in this case we've got three hundred minus two hundred so we get a hundred divided by 5 that equals 20 so our contour interval here is 20 which means every distance between each one of these lines is an elevation change of 20 feet our first feature is a hill Hills are pretty easy they're really easy to pick out they're easy to pick out in nature what creates a hill using topographic lines are these concentric circles getting smaller so you see how these circles are getting smaller as we're going up if I draw the contour lines on this hill you see that they're getting smaller as we're getting closer to the peak of that hill which is right here and you can also see that we're going uphill by looking at the contour index numbers we're going from a hundred units to 200 units of elevation so we're definitely going uphill and as these get closer together remember that the hill will get steeper some people will call it a hill some people will call it a knoll some people will call it a mountain but typically a knoll is a little bit smaller than a hill a hill is a little bit smaller than a mountain mountains are usually very large and steep looking at the different hill shapes now we're starting to look at the spacing between the contours the first shape is called concave so we're going concave right here and you can tell that it these indexes are a little bit farther apart here and here they're getting really really close together so that's getting to that steep part this hill right there the other type is a convex more of this hump going down and you can see how the index lines kind of stay uniform going downhill you can also take a look at the distance between indexes so here we're going 200 to 300 over that small space and you can see that going from 200 to 300 is a little bit stretched out so you can you can gauge the steepness based on how close those contours are together something that's very steep is called the cliff and these contour lines are really really close together and that corresponds to this flat area followed by the drop-off of the cliff and then we have a flat area down below another topographic feature that's common in mountainous areas is called a saddle and a saddle is looks just like a horse's saddle it's this low valley between typically two hills and if you've ever done any research on Mount Everest or watched any of the shows on Everest done any reading on Everest you hear something called the South call and what a call is is it's the lowest point of a saddle one of the more important topographic features on a map is called a valley or a draw and an easy way to remember a valley is it starts with the letter V and when a contour line crosses a river or stream they take on the shape of a V and when you look at it the point of the V is pointing uphill and the opening of the V is the direction that the water is traveling so when we look at it on a map we can see a lot of these on this map there's a lot of streams a lot of places contour lines are caught crossing water so we see a bunch of V's right in this area ok and what we can take a look at here is the terrain is a hill going up in elevation in this direction and the water is traveling downhill in this direction remember the water is coming out of the V and the point is pointing to the top of the hill and we can we can double-check ourselves because we can take a look at the contour indexes right here and we see that they're going from 26 to 3,200 so we're definitely going uphill in this direction so gravity will cause water to flow in the other direction so let's take a look at some of these other V's here so here's here's a V contour lines are crossing the stream so we can take a look at it in the same way the uphill approach to the mountain is that way downhill with the way the water is going to travel is this way same with these V's and then we if we take over here we can see that our map has indicated that this is kind of a low marshy land you see no contour lines creating any hills it's very flat and also has wetland designation on it and just as important the valley is the spur is also very important and the valley creates the V a spur will create a U and there's you unlike the valley this is pointing downhill so in this topographic map we have a bunch of different hues being created I see a u right here which that corresponds to this spur coming off this mountain then we have this bigger you right here which corresponds right here and remember the base of the U this part of the U is pointing downhill so we're going downhill in this direction downhill in this direction and then the final U is right here we're looking right here here's another u which indicates this is a spur on the map right there okay so we've we've gone over the hills the valleys the Spurs another topographic feature is the ridge and a ridge is a relatively area on the top of a mountain with steep sides going over on either side and even in front of the you so we actually have a spur right here and then the ridge is in this area right here and this kind of corresponds right here so you can see how this is this flat area that turns into the spur going downhill right here another topographic feature you may run into is called the gully and a gully is a three-sided low part in the land as you can see we kind of have three sides right here with this low area indicated down in here which corresponds to this area right here we have we're surrounded by three sides so that's usually called a gully the final topographic feature you're gonna run into is called a depression and this is a low point in the ground or a sinkhole could be man-made but think of it just as a hole in the ground the contour lines look a little bit different here we have what are called tick marks or hatch marks and that indicates that this is X this area is actually lower than this area inside of this hole it corresponds to here and these steep edges correspond to these tick marks and when you're looking at the elevation of the depression this contour line is actually the height of the last regular contour line without ticks or hatches on them so if we're looking at this we have a contour interval of 20 so this right here this line is a hundred and eighty right here so this line is also a hundred and eighty units of elevation but this next line right down here this is now going to be 160 the contour interval is consistent but it when you have those tick marks it actually works in Reverse okay so now that we've learned all of our different topographic features let's take a little bit of a quiz this is actually taken right from your own Cal strums book I've seen this exact same question on the New York State guide license test so let's try to figure out what each one of these typographic lines correspond to the actual feature so let's take a look at number one and number one we're seeing a hill and then what looks to be like a higher Hill because we've got a few contour lines going a little higher so looking at these shapes I would say that this isn't number one corresponds to be number two is pretty easy that looks like a mountain to me so we're gonna connect that up with E now looking at number three hmm this one kind of looks like number six as well if you recall that this could be a saddle and let's look at what's different about these two so this one I have one two three four contour lines going up to the top of that mountain hill and I only have two going up here so this one number six is actually going to be a lot steeper than number three so if we take a look at our options I would say that three corresponds to D and six corresponds to a and then we have these two final features left and let's look at number five first so we're looking at a really flat area right here a Ridge or a plateau on top of this mountain and it kind of corresponds to that plateau there so this goes 5 goes to F and then we have just a standard Hill that's a little steeper on the left side as opposed to the right side which corresponds to C ok so now that we've learned about our different topographic features let's put it to work I have a map here of the Adirondack high peaks region about Marcy is the tallest peak in New York State first let's take a look at our contour indexes and figure out what our contour interval is of this map so let's just pick got one here we can probably use these two right here so we have 4,000 and 3,800 and I don't see any other index in there and there's 1 2 3 4 5 intermediate contour lines so what do we do we subtract the two so 4,000 minus 38 is 200 right and then we're gonna divide by 5 because there's 5 index or 5 contour lines between indexes so that equals 40 so we have 40 feet in this case is our contour interval so now let's take a look at the different hills or mountains on this map there are labeled Mount Marcy you can see the concentric circles here we're getting taller as the circles are getting taller as we're getting towards the peak same thing with skylight we got big circles here and they're getting smaller as we head up the mountain and get towards the peak haystack same thing and another thing I would like to point out is the colors on this map and you can see we have green but then there's these areas of white on top of the mountains and all of these mountains in this map are what are called exposed peaks it's all granted at the top with very little vegetation so these are rock slides or exposed peaks that we're seeing with the white color as opposed to the green so same map and there's lots of streams that are going through the mountains here so let's identify our different valleys so let's first take take a look at this stream right here so let's take a look at the contours when they cross the stream they're creating a V and the V's are going in this direction alright so that what does that tell us that tells us that the elevation is increasing as we go that way and the water is flowing down that way and then we have our our low-lying land over there let's take a look at another one feldspar brook same thing we've got our visa this direction so that means elevation is increasing as we go up this way and the water is flowing downhill this way and an interesting tidbit the lake tear in the clouds is actually the highest point that runs into the Hudson River so that is actually the headwaters of the Hudson River okay so let's try to identify a rich it's pretty easy because we have the name Bartlett Ridge right here but let's take a look at how it actually looks on the map and the contour lines so as you can see this is a relatively flat area right up here we're only crossing one contour line so there's only 40 feet of elevation change right there because our contour interval is 40 and you can see that it's drops off steeply on each side now let's take a look at saddles there's a bunch of them here the easiest one to pick out is we have our little haystack we have our mount haystack here and then here's a saddle between the two it could be argued that there's a saddle between Marcie and skylight going between here with this being the lowest point between those two I would say that there's also could be a saddle between gray and Marcie so we're looking at two mountains with some sort of dip down in between and let's take a look at some Spurs there's a bunch of them on here one you can see is at the tip of Bartlett Ridge there's a spur here remember those are creating use and the U signifies going downhill this could be considered a spur right here and that's going downhill in this direction we're gonna look at a cliff and we changed maps this is now a map of Letchworth State Park called the Grand Canyon of the east and it has a gorge that is 600 feet deep yeah it's pretty easy to pick out the canyon you can see these contour lines are really close let's figure out what the contour interval is on this map so we can pick any two indexes let's just take these two so it's a difference of a hundred divided by five so we get a contour index of twenty so we're looking at the gorge right here you can see the index line to index lines and the contour lines are super close together indicating a very steep drop-off this is relatively flat land up here you can see the white area right here most of this is farmland and then that's just as drop off into this spectacular Gorge so let's use our knowledge of our contour interval to figure out how deep the gorge is around this area this is called the Great Bend looking at this map and remember that index lines always form a circle so this index line right here is our 700 feet right here which corresponds to that index right there and then we're gonna look at where we're going so we're going up to 1200 feet right here so 700 to 1200 is 500 feet then we got one two more contour lines that it actually crosses right there so that would give us 540 feet so let's switch maps again and the reason I'm switching maps is because what I'm gonna do is actually go to this location and we'll point out the different topographic features this is Zoar valley and it has some really really rich geological features and we can take a look at them here and then in an in the next video I'm actually going to go to Zoar Valley and point these out in real time on the map so let's take a look our first feature is a hill right here is definitely a hill this is actually called the pyramid it's a pretty cool climb up right here would be our use remember that's a spur going downhill this way this is called point Peter that's a really kind of neat knife's edge right there another spur coming out is right here this is actually called the knife's edge let's take a look at some other things so another cool thing ins or Vail there's a lot of streams feeding into the Cattaraugus Creek so that means that there is some opportunities to see the valleys and we see contour lines crossing the stream here and we can see that they're creating a V going up in that way and what's really cool about this map is you can see the V coming here so the water is traveling downhill that in this direction and because these contour lines are really really close together what do you think that is right that's a waterfall right there same thing right here we see the V's going up this way so we're going uphill in this direction the water's flowing towards the gorge and we have another waterfall created right there because we have this really steep drop-off in the gorge also known as a cliff so that's topographic maps in a nutshell we went over Buren Kallstrom x' 5ds and we did the first two DS which are descriptions which was what was in the margins of the map and all that information at the bottom of the map and then we went over map details which included the colors on the map as well as the contour lines which give a tries to give us a 3d representation in a two-dimensional map in the next video in the series we'll talk about the other 3ds the first is directions we'll talk about the compass and a nasty thing called declination we'll talk about the distances which is the scale of the map and finally we'll talk about the designations which is simply how things are drawn on the map these videos will be the perfect primer for our work with the map and compass I hope you like this video if you did be sure to click that like button if you want to see other how-tos other gear reviews and outdoor adventures be sure to subscribe to my channel that's it for now I'll see you guys outside [Music]

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Views: 12,053

Rating: 4.9594593 out of 5

Keywords: topographic map, how to read a map, how to read topographic maps, map reading, topography, topo map, topo, introduction to topographic maps, navigation, orienteering, land navigation, map and compass, using a compass, map and compass (simplified), topographic map and compass, bjørn kjellstrøm, how to be expert with map and compass, contour lines, topographic features, contour interval, terrain features, map skills, hiking, ten essentials, 10 essentials, how to read topo map

Id: qpcXvqTstZ4

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020