Come celebrate terrain cartography at the Library of Congress on Thursday, February 26th from 5pm to 8pm with Adventures in Topographic Mapping, a special Live! At The Library event reaching new heights in mapping mountains and shaded relief!
Adventures in Topographic Mapping will feature interactive games and crafts, a display of topographic collection items from across the Library, and a talk by Tom Patterson, retired cartographer with the U.S. National Park Service, on techniques of terrain mapping through history.
Topography refers to the study and mapping of the shape and elevation of earth’s landforms. Effectively translating our three-dimensional world into the two-dimensional space of your paper hiking map or online web map is both a science and an art. Maps of topography take many forms across cartographic history, from contour lines and hachures, to shaded relief and digital methods. This program, originally scheduled for November 2025, is a belated celebration of GIS Day, an annual event highlighting advancements in geospatial science and technology.
Adventures in Topographic Mapping will take place as part of Live! At The Library, inviting the public to explore our exhibits, collections and programs in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building and offering happy hour snacks and drinks for purchase in the Great Hall.
Tickets are required for this Live! At The Library event. These tickets can be reserved here.
You can reserve a ticket for Tom Patterson’s talk here. This ticket also provides access to the Live! At The Library event.
Event Schedule
All event activities will take place in the Thomas Jefferson Building (10 First Street SE, Washington, D.C.).
- 5pm to 8pm in the Great Hall: Learn the basics of orienteering, express your artistry with watercolor landscape painting, and help build a collaborative terrain model of the hills around Tombstone, Arizona!
- 6:30pm to 7:30pm in LJ-119: Tom Patterson, “From Airbrush to AI: A Talk on Cartographic Relief” (tickets here)
- 5pm to 6:30pm; 7:30pm to 8pm in LJ-113: Display of topographic collection items from across the Library (this display will be closed from 6:30pm to 7:30pm during Tom Patterson’s talk).
Tom Patterson
Tom Patterson is a retired cartographer with the U.S. National Park Service. Over an extensive career in cartography, including over 25 years mapping National Parks, Patterson has become especially accomplished in topographic mapping techniques and terrain visualization. If you have explored America’s National Parks by their official maps over the years, you have likely encountered his handiwork! Patterson is also a former president and executive director of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), and he continues to produce maps independently.
His talk, “From Airbrush to AI: My Career in Cartographic Relief” will showcase the history of mapping at the U.S. National Park Service, including the transition from grayscale to natural color reliefs to represent the wide range of park environments and the use of geodata and software to mimic the exquisite manual panoramas of Heinrich Berann. Patterson will conclude by addressing his work developing software that employs machine learning and AI for terrain presentation, including a sneak peek at new tools.
We look forward to seeing you there!