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Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

by Levi Westerveld

By GRID-Arendal

March 22^nd, 2021

An innovative new mapping project aims to present a more expansive view of permafrost, not simply depicting the physical geography but also showing how changes in permafrost affect human communities in the Arctic. The maps are being produced as part of the Nunataryuk project, an EU-funded initiative that brings social scientists and natural scientists together to study the implications of permafrost thaw in the Arctic – a critical indicator of climate change.

The maps will be published in the forthcoming Arctic Permafrost Atlas, a 100-page coffee table–style book to be released in 2023 in both print and digital formats. The atlas, a key output of Nunataryuk, will showcase the latest research, data, and knowledge about permafrost from researchers within and beyond the project. As an interdisciplinary publication, it will also focus on the people whose lives revolve around permafrost and explore strategies they can use to adapt to permafrost thaw.

The atlas is intended to be a beautiful book that will draw in a general audience as well as researchers and scientists. Half of the pages will be dedicated to maps, graphics, and photographs, including portraits of Indigenous people and others who live and work in the Arctic. Scientists from all 26 Nunataryuk partner institutions, including many universities and research groups, will contribute data, findings, ideas, and visuals.

As an early step in development of the atlas, Nunataryuk partner GRID-Arendal is beginning to produce the maps. Here’s a look into that creative process.

Maps are perfect for visualizing environmental variables such as snow cover distribution, temperature anomalies, or population density. But when it comes to visualizing data pertaining to the social sciences, a lot of work remains to be done to develop the right cartographic language. Take, for example, the ways that coastal erosion from permafrost thaw affects human habitation. How do we go about visualizing and trying to communicate the social implications of such a change? Of course, we can map current or projected changes in coastlines, but how can we capture in visuals what this means on the ground for communities or their cultural heritage? Some of these challenges will require us to think outside the box and draw inspiration from other leaders in visual communication as we produce this atlas.

GRID-Arendal has a long history of developing complex atlases on a range of issues. We are also inspired by the innovative visual products produced by well-known media outlets. The New York Times, Reuters, and National Geographic have all produced unique visual narratives on permafrost thaw and its implications. We are excited to produce an atlas of that same visual quality.

We have recently started drafting a few maps to help us settle on a design template that captures the look and feel we want for the atlas. This template will include fonts, colours, map projections, placement of elements such as titles and legends, and even small details such as arrow heads and stroke width. Below is a draft of one of these maps, showing where people live on permafrost in the Arctic. It is still a work in progress, so the version that ultimately appears in the atlas may look quite different.

Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

After the concept for a map is sketched out, we move into Geographic Information System (GIS) software, which enables the manipulation of spatial data. Here, all the relevant data is brought together, analysed, and organized. The information is then exported to two more software programs, Photoshop and Illustrator, where the map is polished into a first draft.

Mapmaking usually starts with building a basemap, the layers that will sit in the very back of the map, at the bottom of what we call “the visual hierarchy”. It features information such as landmass, topography, water bodies, glaciers, and the extent of permafrost in the Arctic.

Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

As this information is meant to sit in the background, the basemap normally uses unsaturated colours. More vivid and contrasting colours will be used to show off the main data. For the Arctic Permafrost Atlas, we want to produce basemaps that communicate something about the environment. Here, for example, colder colours that suggest the Arctic climate were chosen. Note as well how the blue in the ocean and brown of the permafrost are not continuous flat colours, but rather on a gradient, giving depth to the basemap.

Next comes the line work. There are usually many lines on a map. This draft template includes lines for national and regional borders, latitude and longitude lines, and ripple lines around the coasts. Hashed lines are used to show the proportion of Indigenous people living in the different Arctic regions. This data on Indigenous populations, as well as information on the size of settlements in the Arctic, was put together by Nordregio, a Nunataryuk partner – an example of how the atlas will draw on the resources and knowledge of a large number of people and organizations.

Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

Lastly, text elements such as a title, a legend, labels, and credits for data sources are added. Colour correlations are used to help draw connections. In this case, labels for countries and provinces are white, as are their borders, while oceans and ocean labels are blue and settlements and settlement labels are brown.

For this map, a lot of the data is concentrated on right-hand side in Russia, so the legend and titles have been placed mostly on the left-hand side, to keep a visual balance.

Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

Explained like this, the process might appear clean and straightforward, but it’s far from it. Rather, creating a map involves perpetual back and forth, trying different placements and combinations of colours, fonts, opacity levels, and so on. And because everything is tied together visually, one change often results in a cascading effect that means many other elements of the map then need to be revised.

Later this spring, all the researchers working on the Nunataryuk project will gather together for an online meeting. The agenda will include an interactive session where everyone will have an opportunity to contribute to the atlas’s table of contents.

This year we will also finalize a series of portraits and interviews with permafrost inhabitants and researchers that will be an integral part of the atlas. The goal of these portraits is to give a human dimension to the story of thawing permafrost. A challenge with these regional maps that span the entire Arctic – like the one shown above – is that the data can seem disconnected from people. The aim of the portraits is to bridge that gap by putting real faces and stories behind the dots and lines on the maps.

We look forward to showing off the final result of our collaborative work in two years’ time. Until then, we’ll continue to share behind-the-scenes stories about the making the Arctic Permafrost Atlas.

This is part of the "Nunataryuk Behind the Scenes" series, a collection of stories about the making of the Arctic Permafrost Atlas.

This story was produced as part of the Nunataryuk project, which is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 773421.

Behind the scenes: Making maps for the first Arctic Permafrost Atlas

Levi Westerveld is a geographer in the Technology and Innovation Programme at GRID-Arendal.

© 2026 GRID-Arendal

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