Map notes

- by Paul Anderson

Note that the original map from which many of the features were derived can be found here. Thanks are due to the many individuals who added features to that map. Limitations of Google Maps (described below) prevented me from using that map as-is.

The boundary for the Cayuga Lake Basin was taken from this map created by Charles Eldermire from the1926 edition of Wiegand & Eames' "Flora of the Cayuga Basin" and the official Cayuga Basin watershed map. Again, problems with Google maps prevented me from using that as-is, so I had to copy it and turn it from a polygon to a polyline. Thanks are due to Charles nevertheless.

The topological map was made possible due to Joseph Elfelt, the author of Gmap4 and the curator of http://www.mappingsupport.com. Many thanks are due to him for his supremely awesome work.

I am eager for others to contribute to this map, whether to add entirely new sites or to edit existing ones. Please contact me for edit permissions.

For the reasons mentioned below, I am keen to avoid maps with many more features than are shown in the Cayuga Lake Basin map.

Google Maps Problems and Limitations

Google Maps is incapable of properly displaying a large number of features on a single map, either as a full-screen or embedded map. As a full-screen map it will introduce paging, so one must click the "next" or "previous" links to see all the features. When that map is shown in embedded mode, the list of features is silently truncated and there is no way to see the remaining items. If the page split point were predictable or known, this would not be so bad, but it isn't. One can create a KML file and point Google maps at that in order to see all features, but the functionality of the map in that case is badly broken. Consequently, the only solution is to limit the number of features on a single map. This is why we have a single map for Cayuga Lake. When I get a chance, I may also set up a Seneca Lake map.

The borders are defined as polylines instead of polygons because clicking anywhere inside a polygon causes the placemark box for the polygon to pop up and be scrolled to. If this was off-screen, it is very jarring. When a feature is within the polygon, a missed click makes navigation a highly frustrating experience.