In the side pane, there is an image of a UNESCO World Heritage site. A clue is shown below the image.

Zooming means changing the scale of a map to see more or less detail. Panning means changing the extent to see different areas on the map.

When you get close enough, a pin and label appear.

Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia, built in the twelfth century.

At a certain zoom extent, the basemap shows more details of the area. You can see the grounds of Angkor Wat and the wide rectangular moat that surrounds the temple.

This map shows U.S. maritime activity and includes tools that allow you to explore the paths of vessels, visualize patterns, and download data. You can explore the paths of vessels and identify trends by time, vessel type, and place on data between January 2017 and June 2020.

Vessel traffic data is an important resource made available by the U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) through Marine Cadastre. Vessel traffic data can help avoid ocean-based slow downs and crashes.

You'll start by exploring cargo traffic management.

It is important for cargo ships to follow sea traffic rules and control their speed and course as they come in and out of major ports. On the map, you can see what looks like lanes on the open seas. Port managers define the lanes to keep the vessels safe.

Next, you'll see another example of how rules impact open seas traffic.

The map is lit up with pink lines, indicating passenger ship traffic.

By turning on Nautical Boundaries, a line appears showing where the bounds of a country reaches beyond the land and into the ocean.

There are a number of line clusters out in the open water. Why might a passenger vessel sail just beyond the nautical boundary and return?

A bar appears at the top of the application with the vessel name. This is a gambling vessel. In states where gambling is not legal, there are vessels that ferry passengers outside the nautical boundaries where the rules no longer apply.

Next, you'll explore an example during the first month of the COVID-19 response.

There are a number of routes forming rectangular off the coast of San Francisco. What do you think was happening?

These were cruise ship vessels.

When medical personnel in the United States were first responding to the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020, cruise ships, which may have had COVID-19 cases on board, were not allowed to dock. These vessels, and their passengers, traveled in loops outside their ports for several days and weeks, waiting for clearance to dock.

Finally, you'll explore how patterns in vessel traffic reflect the cycles of nature.

When are the busiest fishing months of the year? You can see the fishing vessels appear according to the seasonal migration patterns of salmon at their peak in the months of May to October.

As you explore, be curious and click buttons and interact with the maps to get the full experience of an ArcGIS StoryMaps story.

A map of the African continent is displayed. The percentage of people living in cities is growing fast in countries like Egypt and Nigeria.

The map zooms in to the North Africa region.

Map action buttons add an interactive component to maps in a story, allowing the reader to adjust the map view by turning the map action buttons on and off.

Among these urban centers are some of the oldest human settlements on the continent. Cairo is Africa's largest city with a population of nearly 23 million.

Rapid population growth and development in rural areas have also led to the emergence of thousands of small urban agglomerations, or urban centers.

A pop-up appears with more information.

These map symbols represent the percentage of growth in the population from 2000 to 2015. Clicking each circle reveals a pop-up with information about the small urban agglomeration, the estimated population, and the percentage of growth.

You can download the maps and data in this story. Including a way for viewers to access the data used in maps throughout the story provides opportunity for further learning and creativity.

The story concludes with recommended links related to population growth.

The In America: Remember exhibit was a memorial and art installation on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in September and October of 2021. The lawn on the National Mall was blanketed with more than 660,000 white flags, each representing a life lost to COVID-19. Visitors were invited to personalize and dedicate a flag for someone they lost, and using GIS technology, visitors who could not be there in person were able to dedicate a flag digitally.

The website includes a map that serves as a memorial to those who have died in the pandemic. Each flag on this map represents a life lost to COVID-19 and many of the flags include personal dedications and messages added by someone who wished to honor a loved one they lost.

The Info pane appears; it includes information about the flag you clicked. An image of the flag when it was on the lawn on the National Mall appears with a personal message, hand written from a loved one.

For those who submitted a flag online, a dedicated group of volunteers transcribed the messages onto a flag and took a picture to show the message was part of the exhibit.

The flags were organized by numbered sections so that a reference could be provided to locate a specific flag.

This section was dedicated to physicians and frontline health workers who lost their lives serving and providing medical care to others who had COVID-19.

This map features photos and messages of remembrance for the lives lost to COVID-19. While this map can't bring these people back, it can offer a space for mourning and remembrance. It allows us to understand the losses from COVID-19 not as numbers, but as individual lives.

This map is an example of crowdsourcing, in which you invite anyone to contribute data and information to a survey or map. This is one of many ways you can collect data to show on a map.

This story explains the causes of poor air quality, shares data on air quality in maps, and illustrates the human impact of poor air quality.

Many maps start with questions that need to be answered or problems that need to be solved.

There are many ways to visualize air quality. One way is to view Air Quality Index (AQI) values.

Particulate matter, or PM, at the size of 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter is especially concerning to human health, as it is small enough to enter deep into lungs and even the bloodstream.

Poor ambient or outdoor air pollution is a major environmental health risk all over the world, increasing the chance of people developing diseases such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and asthma.

This map explores the relationship between areas with high PM 2.5 values and communities of color in the United States.

Maps can help visualize where new policies can address and improve equity.

This story is part of a collection of stories exploring air quality conditions and policies around the world.

The title of the next story is Call to Action: End environmental racism now.

The beginning sections explain how the burden of environmental pollution is not evenly distributed throughout the United States and that communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities are more likely to live and work in areas that have historically been disproportionately burdened with poor air and environmental pollution impacts. In particular, the African American population has been found to be 54 percent more likely to live in an area of heavy air pollution and under-resourced communities are 35 percent more likely.

By combining maps that show where there are high levels of PM 2.5 (in pink) and a high percentage of Black population (in blue), the relationship between the two is more evident.

Another way to visualize a relationship in a map is to style layers using a relationship map. A relationship map displays two data values with a grid of colors, showing whether the two attributes have data values that are both high, both low, or individually high or low, with two different colors for each corner of the grid.

In this example, the darkest blue color represents areas where there is both a high PM 2.5 level and high Black population. The lighter blue areas represent where there is low PM 2.5 but a high percentage of the Black population, and the pink areas represent the reverse—areas with low Black population but high PM 2.5.

Government agencies, advocacy groups, and concerned residents can all use maps to make informed decisions about air quality policy. If racial equity and social justice are important components of the policy-making process, maps can serve as a useful tool for determining where to allocate resources where they are most needed.

You can continue exploring the remaining stories in the collection, which includes more maps, data, and tools for policy mapping in the United States and around the world.

Every day, maps are created to help make decisions about everything from where to construct levies to how to limit the environmental impacts of new construction projects. Maps are powerful tools that you can use to analyze our world and make the important decisions that will shape it.