Map interpretation
Also called: Toposheet interpretation · Topic: Topographical Maps: Relief Representation and Interpretation · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Topographical Maps"
Meaning
Map interpretation means studying a topographical map to explain why its features are where they are. Map reading only finds the features. Interpretation looks for cause-and-effect links between them. For example, it asks why forests grow on steep slopes, why crops grow on plains, and why villages line up along roads and rivers.
You begin with the marginal information, the details printed around the edge of the sheet. Next you trace relief, drainage, land use, and settlement with transport onto separate tracing sheets. Then you superimpose them, which means laying one tracing over another. Putting the contours over the land use, for example, shows how slope controls the use of land. This hand overlay is the ancestor of GIS overlay.
Example
NCERT's practice sheet 63K/12 covers parts of Mirzapur and Varanasi districts in Uttar Pradesh, on the Ganga. If you lay the settlement tracing over the drainage tracing, you can see how villages on the Ganga's right bank are placed in relation to the river. You can also see how the people of Bhatauli cross it.
Don't confuse with
- Map reading: this means knowing what the signs, colours and contours stand for. Map interpretation goes one step further and explains how those features affect each other.