Carl M. Sack

Landsat 8 Poster: Sometimes the most breathtaking maps are the simplest. On October 17, 2021, the Landsat 8 satellite swept across Path 26 on a rare almost completely cloudless day across the western Lake Superior region. I mosaicked two adjoining scenes and performed color adjustments in ArcGIS Pro and Photoshop to create this door-sized strip poster capturing the progression of autumn from Bloomer and St. Croix Falls to the Canadian border. From the swirling sediments and miniscule ore ships on Lake Superior to the coppery patchwork of forest, pine plantation, and farms, to the knobby hills and lake-studded striations left behind by the Laurentide ice sheet, the fantastic carpet of textures in this image reveals the incredible wonder of the area I call home. Click here for a larger image. Contact me for the full resolution file.

Where Do FDLTCC Undergraduates Come From?: As GIS Program Coordinator at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, most of my energy goes toward teaching and advising students on their GIS projects. However, sometimes I am asked to put my own map-making skills to use in service of my institution. This annual patial analysis and mapping of our student body assists with marketing and promotion and shows just how wide an impact we have on the region.

Line 5 maps: Line 5 is an Enbridge oil pipeline that crosses northern Wisconsin and the length of Michigan, carrying crude oil from northern Alberta to Sarnia, Ontario under the Straits of Mackinac. The line has been challenged for the danger it poses to lakes Michigan and Huron at the Straits. The Bad River Band of Ojibwe have demanded that Enbridge remove the pipeline, which it has been operating without a legal easement across tribal property since 2013. Enbridge is seeking to reroute the pipeline through the headwaters of the Bad River Watershed as the Band's case against them proceeds through court.

Nibi Bimaadiziwin. Water gives life. Here are a couple of random water maps I created.

Lincoln Community Forest Trail Map: I still love trail maps. This was a simple trailhead kiosk map I created for a community organization in Bayfield County, Wisconsin. Normally I steer clear of imagery backgrounds, but given the active forest management in this parcel, adding the digitized lines atop recent USDA NAIP imagery seemed appropriate.

Tar Sands Colonialism: Enbridge Line 3 and Indigenous Territory: Enbridge Energy's Line 3 pipeline replacement project doubled the flow of tar sands oil through what had been an aging pipeline across Ojibwe treaty territory. The company paid regional law enforcement agencies to counter stiff resistance from Indigenous water protectors and allies. The pipeline ultimately resulted in 28 frack-outs releasing toxic drilling mud into waterways and three confined aquifer breaches. This map was designed during the early days of civil disobedience to show the Water Protector Welcome Center at the pipeline's lower crossing of the Mississippi River and wild rice lakes endangered by the project.

Invisible Nation: Mapping Sioux Treaty Boundaries: This was a series of maps I put together showing the boundaries of Sioux Territory as defined by the peace treaties of 1851 and 1868 and interpreted by the Indian Claims Commission in the 1960s and 70s. These maps involved experimenting with adding sattelite imagery to shaded relief. I detail my research process and design choices in this blog post.

The Black Snake in Sioux Country: I made this map to show the geography of the 2016 struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and their allies against the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline in North Dakota. The map highlights the reroute of the pipeline corridor to avoid potential water contamination in majority-white communities while putting Native American communities at greater risk, along with the locations of resistance camps and where the pipeline company preemptively bulldozed an area containing archaeological sites to avoid a court-ordered halt to construction. My full statement on the map is available here.

NACIS Fun Run maps: I can't sit still at conferences for multiple days on end without some exercise, and what better way to see a host city than on foot? I started planning the Fun Run for the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) conference in 2015. Each running route at a cartography conference needs a map, of course. Here are a couple of them.

Maps for Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: I create about one map every two months pertaining to an environmental justice issue on contract for the peer-reviewed journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.

A Sand County Disappearing: Frac sand mining has exploded in Wisconsin over the past two years, raising concerns about air and groundwater pollution in the western part of the state. Of even greater concern is where the sand goes: it's fueling a boom in hydraulic fracturing or fracking, a natural gas extraction technique that has contaminated drinking water supplies with methane and a soup of cancer-causing chemicals. (view small)

Mining In Northern Wisconsin: In 2002, another UW Geography grad student, Zoltán Grossman, created a map showing all of the active prospects for mines in the northern part of the state. Mining is once again a hot-button political issue, so I decided that an updated version of Zoltán's map would be a useful information resource for the concerned public. We worked together to update and distribute the map, keeping the original black-and-white design for simplicity and reproduceability.

Water On the Line: I believe in using maps to advocate for communities and the environment. My map of the proposed Penokee Mine site in northern Wisconsin was reprinted hundreds of times and used by legislators, local residents, and environmental activists around the state.

Other Penokee Maps: Between 2012 and 2014 I made a number of maps of the Penokee Hills and Bad River Watershed, both for public use and for activists seeking a better understanding of the scope of the proposed mine. Although less widely distributed than Water on the Line, many of these maps were nonetheless used by many and had an impact on the struggle. The Penokee Mountains Heritage Park map in particular was an imaginative collaboration with the Lac Courte Orielles Tribe's Harvest and Education Learning Project to envision what kind of cultural, economic, and recreational resource the Penokee Hills could be if preserved for future generations.

Madison Light Rail: What if Madison, Wisconsin had a light rail transit network? What would such a network look like if developed cost-effectively, using mostly existing rail corridors? What benefits could it bring to workers, commuters, and the local economy? I became curious about these questions and decided to pursue them through an independent mapping, spatial analysis, and info graphic project over the summer of 2014.

Passenger Rail in the United States: The U.S. once had the most advanced, widespread passenger rail network in the world. Our system today is a shambles, while other nations continue to make advances that put rail as the cleanest, safest, most comfortable, and in many cases fastest way to travel. High-speed rail advocates in this country have put forward proposals for decades, but keep running into a brick wall of powerful car makers and oil companies that keeps the federal subsidies to new road construction flowing. This graphic poster makes the case for a real rebuilding effort that could put a nation to work and slash our use of fossil fuels. Find a high-resolution version here.

Child Suicide: Choropleth maps are dramatic representations of data that activate visual thinking, allowing the map user to make meaning from information that would be otherwise tough to parse. Difficult problems and overlooked topics can be brought into the light of public scrutiny, creating a force for change.

Major Coal Mines: Much scrutiny has been given to the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, but as I was surprised to discover while making a Wikipedia-style proportional symbol map of this dataset, the vast majority of domestically-produced coal now comes from mines in Western states. In fact, only two of the 60 most-producing coal mines are West Virginia MTR mines.

Ashland County Themes: These maps required a combination of spatial analysis operations along three different themes. I went beyond ArcGIS and added a little extra flair to them in Illustrator.

Duluth Trails: An as-yet-unfinished project predating my move to grad school, I intended to create a trail guide to Duluth, Minnesota and vicinity. This urban metropolitan area contains thousands of acres of public land ranging from developed parks to near-wilderness, and over 100 miles of nonmotorized recreation trails. I wrote descriptions and created aesthetically-pleasing maps of most of the trail systems in and around the city.