KAMAU THIONG'O

I bet with you, I make maps and I know that #TheMapsPeopleMake are the #GamesPeoplePlay. This is not all that I have, reach out and we can make together. Like a river originates from somewhere [spatial], my emergency and passion in GIS can be traced back through [time];  My Path to Cartography . Welcome (karibu) to Moses K. Thiong'o's (TKM) GIS Portfolio and/or story. It is prepared & designed to show his work in line with his career and the fun related works he is proud to have completed.

-- Secret union means strength --

These are some of my projects that I have worked on in the past. It is good to state that, at this time, there is no product that has been made for sale. It is all out as a result of my passion for the art of Map Making and learning purposes. If you have any questions, please reach out to me through the contacts found on the footnote of this document.

The Knowledge for Great Green Wall Action (K4GGWA) program by  CIFOR-ICRAF  served as the model for the map. The overall impact aims at enabling sustainable land management and livelihoods in support of the Great Green Wall initiative and the acceleration of progress towards its objectives. K4GGWA will empower key GGW stakeholders to enhance their knowledge management and sharing mechanisms, develop learning and data platforms, foster dialogue at national and regional levels, fund innovations, strengthen policies and institutions, and enhance the capacities of national and regional GGW agencies.

I am glad that I was not only able to test the Light Still Blue color shade on these maps but also communicate a very topical issue in the Universe: Climate Change in the Arctic & Antarctic regions. Frankly, I usually do create but at times, I create and I fall in love with what becomes the end product. This is one of them. It involved a lot of testing of color swaths. PATIENCE was a key virtue during the time this project was being undertaken. Please let me know what you think on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn  about this.

The inspiration to make this map came from  Erwin Raisz's Physical Landform  map through  John Nelson's German Poster Map .

The map was shared in my socials as well as on the  ArcGIS Pro Twitter  page.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro 2.5.x, and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator

Through inspiration by John Nelson, I made this map of Tanzania to show where the landform changes rapidly. The map shows that the areas around Mt. Kilimanjaro (near the Kenyan border) has a very varied geography. This falls under the Great Eastern Rift Valley.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro 2.6.x

This map is one of my Graduate school works. It was a single-page graphic to illustrate one entire zone of the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) system. The zone of interest here is a small town in central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Considerations: I chose a land that had land features in both hemispheres (ideally at the same UTM coordinates). An ideal layout format (Portrait) was used and separate 'tall and skinny' data frames for the north and south halves of the zone.

This map shows one 6-degree zone - and only that zone. The lat-long graticule has meridians at 1-degree intervals, and parallels at 10-degree intervals. The UTM grid has lines spaced 500,000 meters [starting at (0,0)].

A second point has been plotted with the exact same UTM coordinates but in the opposite hemisphere.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro

This is another assignment project for my Graduate school in 201 focusing on State Plane Coordinate Systems (SPCs). I have presented it during the  2020 NACIS virtual event . The map layout contains one map of the whole state and three separate inset maps of each zone. Florida map is cast on a coordinate system used by the state (covering the whole state) while the three zones has each cast on a projection used for its zone, so that the coordinate system will be perfectly orthogonal to the zone map's edges.

For each of the three zone maps, the central meridians and/or standard parallels, as well as the false origin and the false origin's axes have been plotted. Take a closer look at one of the zones below.

This map of Green was inspired by very first trip to the United States. In this maiden trip, I was attending the Esri User Conference, 2018 as an Esri Young Scholar representing or from Esri Eastern Africa.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro, Adobe Photoshop

A great lesson I learned while making this map was the freedom one has when it comes to custom projections in ArcGIS Pro.

The size of the Hexagon shows how frequently the place was in drought while the color shows how intense the drought was overall.

This project was done for the Contiguous US from 2019 - 2000 and an animation created which can be found  here .

The art of map making is so fascinating. When you associate well with maps, they take you back to memories that will otherwise fade.

Anyway, this map was inspired by an article I read [can't trace it, unfortunately] about the living creatures that can be found in the Southern Cold Deserts.

I am a great fan of Orthographic views of the world. This map was inspired by one of the political maps of Erwin Raisz. Due to my love for the wild in Africa Savanna, I made this map and a number of others (as can be seen in the above storymap of the Big Five shared a few meters below).

Africa is the home of the Big Five. If at this time you haven't seen the storymap that I included here, you're doing a disservice to yourself. Jump up and browse through it. I assure you that there is more nectar than can be drawn in this map. I will wait for you here as you go back to see that awesome storymap!

To show the US Public Libraries Area in 2019 per county, I made this map is MS Excel Pivot Tables and Adobe Photoshop.  John Nelson's Post  was crucial during the creating of this map. Some of the counties may appear null due to lack of data.

In 2021, I participated in the #30DayMapChallenge and this was one of the maps I created to show the Movement of Wildebeest Migration in Masai Mara National Reserve and Serengeti National Park.

This map tells a story of the year's movement of this animals that are a wonder of the world.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro 2.8.2 and Adobe Photoshop

What would a fictional title of the bombing patterns of Vietnam war look like? Well, I envisioned and created it in my own taste. Would it sell itself from the book shelves? Haha, I bet this would be a best seller. Anyways, this was one of my 2021's project that I felt so creative with ArcGIS Pro and Adobe photoshop.

During the #30DayMapChallenge in 2021, I shared this map under the theme of Urban/Rural maps. This Map of Nairobi is showing the number of secondary school population.

Tools: ArcGIS Pro and completed in Adobe Photoshop.

Some of the StoryMaps that I have created are listed below;

Below are some of my pivotal moments captured in a picture. To me, photographs are not only a record of individual moment, they trigger my memory and open doors to rooms of & for people, of emotions, of events and sometimes to thoughts that lie too deep for tears. Some of these photos make me to look back to time and through them, I see what I did and seals all gaps that would otherwise fade very fast. They simply play as a kind of a door which opens on to new spaces inhabited by unforeseen people and events.

Make sure to get in touch below. I usually run a YouTube channel where I share this maps and other tricks that I learn in my day to work. Be a part of my creative world. Remember, #TheMapsPeopleMake are #TheGamesPeoplePlay.