This is part four of a five part series called Mapping Caves, where the basic steps to underwater cave cartography are outlined in a way that both divers and non-divers alike will understand. To start at part one, click here.

Introduction

The final step of the mapping process is to combine all of the hand-drawn sketches into one digital-format map to be printed or distributed online.

Digitizing the Map

To digitize a map, a cartographer needs to scan and trace their individual drawings using a vector graphics editor such as Adobe Illustrator. A complete stick-map is also imported into Illustrator, at the chosen scale of the final draft. The cartographer can then align sections of the line survey from the scanned drawings with the digital stick-map to stitch everything together.

Each drawing is then slowly traced until the map is completed. The digitizing stage is simple, but can be surprisingly time-consuming, often taking longer than the dives themselves!

As the final draft is printed at a smaller scale than what the cartographer will draw at, it is good practice to digitize sketches as you complete them, rather than waiting until the entire cave is finished. This allows the cartographer to preview their final draft, and make adjustments relating to the level of detail or layout of their map before the work has already been completed.

The Final Layout

The benefit of using a vector graphics editor, such as Adobe Illustrator, is that the final map can be expanded, shrunk, and moved around without any loss of quality.

This is important when deciding on the final layout of the map. Caves are a creation of nature and they do not always run in a convenient direction when it comes to fitting everything onto one page. Finding a way to fit the map, titles, symbol legend, compass rose, scale, GPS coordinates, names of the cartographers, cross-sections, and so forth onto a reasonable print size can be a frustrating challenge.

A cartographer can easily spend more hours than they would ever admit to, moving everything around on the map before finally settling on a layout they can be proud of.