The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to the creation of Czechoslovakia and Poland, whilst the end of the Kingdom of Hungary’s centuries-long rule over Spiš and Orava sparked a rivalry between the new neighbours to justify and document – including through cartography – their territorial claims to this multi-ethnic borderland. The coexistence in these regions of Poles and Slovaks, who differed in terms of nationality but were identical in terms of religion, spoke similar highland dialects, and prioritised regional identity over national identity, effectively hindered the drawing of precise territorial boundaries.
This research paper proposes a new method for smoothing polylines on a map, using B-splines iteratively moving away from the vertices. Splines are a popular tool used to smooth data. Unfortunately, natural objects represented by polylines, usually have an irregular shape and unevenly spaced vertices. For such data, splines may have a distorted course. The presented method changes an approach to polylines on the map. The smoothed line is no longer just a line connecting a set of vertices on the map but becomes a path that a hypothetical hiker must follow. The hiker attempts to optimise (simplify) the route so that, it requires the least amount of effort. The hiker will therefore avoid the vertices at a certain distance, leaving dense and even traces. These traces constitute a data set for which the unfavourable properties of splines are eliminated. The vertices of the polyline will be smoothed (bypassed) by the B-spline control point function, which, spread over a dense set of tracks, will perform the first, slight smoothing. Subsequent smoothing iterations will be performed on a modified, increasingly sparse, but still uniform set of traces from the previous iterations. This will allow for even smoothing of any polyline.
The aim of this article is to present and verify a method of estimating population numbers based on an isopleth map that meets the volumetric condition. This boils down to a situation where the volume of a solid enclosed by a statistical surface corresponds to the number of people living in that area. To verify this method, an isopleth map of population density was created based on census data from the Central Statistical Office (in Polish: Główny Urząd Statystyczny, GUS) from 2021, referenced to a grid of 1×1 km squares. Population estimates were made for municipalities in the Lublin Province and then compared with the actual population recorded in these municipalities. The results of the comparison showed that the MPE (mean percentage error) was -2.69 and the MAPE (mean absolute percentage error) was 4.2%. As a result, the proposed method can be considered an effective tool for estimating the population in areas for which no systematic statistical surveys are conducted. These may be, for example, protected areas (national parks, landscape parks) or physiographic units. The method is so versatile that it allows working with official data and data contained in global grid models of population distribution.
In 2023, one hundred years had passed since the publication of the first issue of Polski Przegląd Kartograficzny (PPK) – the only Polish scientific journal devoted exclusively to cartography. This anniversary provided an opportunity to conduct an analytical and historical review of the journal’s achievements. The article aims to present a quantitative and qualitative analysis of PPK’s content over a century. The study examines changes in the number of publications of various types (articles, reviews, reports, etc.) as well as the evolution of the thematic scope of the articles.
This paper arguments that despite the historical and political contexts of the nineteenth century period and the military intentions of The Map of Old Poland’s [Karta Dawnej Polski] original creators, this source now represents not only the nationhood narrative but also a complex story of wetlands. Due to time constraints and limited resources, the authors did not index forests or other environments in this map, except from aquatic objects. Therefore, we received a rich source containing over 3,700 hydronyms in Polish, including rivers, swamps, bogs, marshes, lakes, and larger bodies of water, some of which no longer exist or are now known only by foreign names. After indexing them for a new digital edition prepared by the Spatial History Lab in the Department of Historical Atlas, this paper envisages how to study such rare cartographical data within the frame of environmental history and the renewed interest in wetland restoration across a drying Europe. Particularly, the eastern parts of the former Polish Kingdom preserved on The Map of Old Poland, stretching from north to south, offer several valuable examples that are case studied in this article.
