How to Read a Topographic Map ? Basic Elements

Description

*Available in HD - Have you ever wondered how to read a topographic map? Or maybe you've heard of topo maps but never really understood what they were. Krik of Black Owl Outdoors goes over the features and functions of topographic maps and how they play a role in your adventure outdoors.

USGS Store - https://goo.gl/wvH18O

Video Transcription

hey wassup Turtles Creek here with black outdoors and what I want to do today is take a look at the features and functions of a topo map so topo is short for topographical topographical and what that means is the map is a 2d representation of our three-dimensional world but it has contour lines which shows elevation and why this is important and this is a very important skill for you to know if you're going to be spending any time in the wilderness but now let's just take a look at the map I have it spread out on the table right here and this is a quad map it's a big map but it can be folded when you're actually using it in your specific area let's take a look at the title now because that's the first thing we want to look at on a map this is Blaine quadrangle seven and a half minute series topographic map and the seven and a half minute is the scale we'll talk more about that as well so it just says Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of iron mineral resources topographic in geologic survey this is coming from the federal government if we pan over to the left which is the Department of the Interior USGS and I will leave a link in description you can actually buy these topo maps now they are for sale and actually has a map locator so if you're interesting these check out the description now we're going to move down to the bottom of the map and look at the scale this is the graphic scale and it doesn't matter what type of map you're using when you look at a map for the first time you want to find the scale in the North arrow but we're looking at the scale down here and it says one to 24,000 and what that means is one inch on this map will equal 24,000 inches in real life which is like two thousand feet so if we look at this graphic scale my fingers at zero and I move over it says one mile and that's about two and five-eighths inches I believe my memory serving me correctly so one inch here is two thousand feet two inches four thousand five thousand two hundred and eighty feet in a mile it makes sense so scale is always important and I chose this one to 24,000 scale because there's a lot of detail expressed on the map moving right below that we can see our contour interval and what that tells us is the feet or distance between our contour lines and we will look at that specifically and I'll show you how to read contour lines moving over to the right now we can see a little bit of a legend and really all this one is showing us are the roads and how they're classified so we have this red and white dashed line medium-duty showing a light-duty road state route which is a circle and then unimproved dirt road which potentially might be 4x4 as well and then continue moving on we'll take a look at the North arrow and this is actually telling us our declination now this map doesn't have just a really bold North arrow but just from experience I know this site or this line excuse me with the star on the top that's what it's showing us our North arrow and what declination is is important very important but basically what it is is the angle difference between true north and magnetic north because the magnetic poles are not where the North Pole is on the earth there is an angle difference and that changes over time it's very very specific to your area so this is an old map and it's telling me eight degrees right but I know that's incorrect because the last time this updated was probably 1984 so you have to know that your current declination where you're going to be traveling hiking camping anything like that now declination is a very important topic and I've covered it in a video on its own so I'm not going to go into any more detail in this video about magnetic declination I chose this map for a few reasons and one of them is being the units the maps and using a measurements and this is UTM standing for a universal trans marketer I believe as opposed to lat long latitude longitude what's the other popular one up in this corner of the map I have a small grid drawn out and you could do it over the whole entire map but what I've done is essentially connected the UTM tick marks from each side running the whole way over here and starting the whole way going down and what I've done is created these thousand meter by thousand meter squares and for all of you who said math is important when are you ever going to use it what I've done is just created an XY access this is algebra this is all this is and I know the value so for example if I had a dot on the map right here I can find the UTM just by knowing this line where I point one my pencil is pointing out this UTM right here this is this number and there's an implied there's three digits missing with this number really is is four million four hundred and seventy thousand there's three decimal places it's implied that this is the value if we trace this line over here you know this is our axis here and we come up and I know this is two hundred eighty six thousand I can infer just by eyeballing it or there are actual UTM grid readers that you would place on top of this and it'll give you in its thousands what this value is then you're going to be adding the specific one and again I'm not going to go to any more detail about how to use how to read UTM s but if it's desired I will do its own specific video but I chose you Tim's because that's what I was trained on with the Forest Service and that's what I'm most comfortable with using all right let's jump back to contour lines take a look at the map and I want to show you how you would read the terrain so little knob it's a nice thing about quad maps that landscape features are named I can see this is a peak there's an X saying the elevation of this 1594 feet above sea level and I know this is a mountain this is an elevation high point one topo maps if you're in the west where there's craters it's going to look the exact same because you're either going up or down but where this is elevation High Point say it's a crater they'll be an X now this X is marking the elevation but to be a more distinct X showing this is a depression but if we jump over here and look at this 1300 line it's bolded if I count up thirteen twenty thirteen forty sixty eighty next Bowl line is 1400 feet and the shape of this is all showing the train right here is probably little drainage pride a femoral drainage if you take a look right here the top of this mountain look how much darker these lines are compared to just right here and what that's telling me is that this is very steep when the contour lines are this close to each other or as close as they can be shown on a map that's telling you it's very very steep terrain so from right here to this contour line if we work our way up this mountain you know it's going to be a steep climb as we work our way down down look how much more spread out these lines are that indicates this is a flatland this is probably a valley well I know it is but the water the contour lines are spread apart the more flat the area is and this is white this is signifying private land all the green on this map means it's public land and this is the Tuscarora Tuscarora excuse me Tuscarora State Forest I know that because right down here as you can see it's saying Tuscarora State Forest this video was to really just start I guess showing you some of the features some of the language specific to detailed topographic maps now we've done videos that are relevant to this how to use a map with a compass and magnetic declination so if you want to learn more watch those videos and if you still have more questions come back and let us know in the comment section below just to reiterate what I say in the beginning this video I think map reading is a very important and critical skill for anyone who wants to spend time outdoors whether you're going for a day hike a week-long backpacking trip canoeing whatever if you're going on that trip there's probably one person is going to take control of the map and GPS but it's still important that everyone in the group knows where you're going and has a general basic understanding of how to look at a map and also know where you are on the map because a maps not any use unless you know where you are on the map I can nerd out about maps any time of the day any day the week so I try to keep this one is video cursory as I said before if you have any questions please leave your comment below as always thank you for your support thanks for your encouragement thanks for your constructive criticisms thanks for your thumbs up thanks for your comments thanks for your emails thanks for your likes thanks to our patrons on patreon really really really appreciate all your support everyone guys and gals Turtles the next video this is Craig dance tourney with black out peace out Turtles

Written on 02 November 2016.

About the Author

Black Owl Outdoors

Welcome to Black Owl Outdoors official YouTube page. We shoot all of our HD videos in the great outdoors and our topics vary with our interests. We do bushcraft type stuff. We talk about plants. We talk about rocks. We talk about water. We talk about animals. We talk about places. We talk about life. We are Krik & stony, just 2 brothers with a hankering for the peace that nature loves to offer.

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How to Read a Topographic Map ? Basic Elements

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