Thematic maps

http://lib.westfield.ma.edu/censusaff.htm


A thematic map as shown above, is a map that shows a particular theme in association which a specific region or area. Thematic maps are extremely different from your normal map in that they do not use features such as lakes, buildings, and streets but instead will only use those things as boundaries for where the specific theme is being mapped. For example, as shown above the median age in the year 2000 is shown for the north eastern United States by using different colors to represent different age groupings. Thematic maps can be used for a multitude of reasons, from the nominations for government officials to the amount of rainfall in the United States. So as stated before thematic maps can be used to pretty much show any particular theme in a specific region, although sometimes random there are trends that can be found with certain themes. For example, if there was a thematic map on the amount of rainfall in South America, you can expect to see a trend wherever the rainforests are there will be more rain there and with that the same shaded color as other tropical rainforests.