This map supplements a National Geographic Magazine feature story "Wasteland" (December 2014). The EPA includes 1,700 waste sites on its National Priorities List as Superfund sites whereby tax dollars foot the bill for environmental remediation when the polluters can't be made to pay. 370 of these hazardous wastelands have been cleaned up, but hundreds continue to leak and have been on the list for decades.

An interactive map illustrates nearly 1 in 6 Americans live near a Superfund site. How close are you?

Credit: Jason Treat, NGM Staff; Meg Roosevelt and Jamie Hawk. Sources: EPA; GAO

Depicting drought intensity across the western U.S., this map is one of several cartographic products supplementing National Geographic Magazine's feature article "When the Snows Fail" (October 2014). The U.S. Drought Monitor provides a weekly update of regional drought condition geospatial data, therefore this map was continuously updated before being sent to the printer. While my participation was minimal in the major cartographic undertaking for this story, I am still honored to have worked with the team. I highly suggest purchasing a physical magazine to view the pièce de résistance: a fold-out graphic depicting California's complex water story, but the interactive graphic is a nice alternative.

Credit: Kelsey Nowakowski, NGM staff; Jamie Hawk. Source: National Drought Mitigation Center.

This map supplements National Geographic Magazine's feature article "50 Years of Wilderness" (September 2014), a story addressing the legacy of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The highly-detailed spatial content warranted a two-page spread, and the extra space enabled dense labeling and superlative text without overwhelming the map. The goal was to illustrate how the majority of current Wilderness Areas are found in the western states and Alaska, while states east of the Mississippi River only contain 3% of the nation's 110 million acres.

Be sure to check out the interactive version.

Credit: Martin Gamache, NGM staff; Jamie Hawk. Sources: USGS; Wilderness.net; Wilderness Society.

Intense historical airway map research was required to create this seemingly simple map for a regional editions of National Geographic Magazine article “Pointing the Way” (April 2014). In the process, I became obsessed with learning about airway beacon arrows, built in the 1920s before radio telecommunication. Up to 70 feet long and painted yellow or other highly visible colors, arrows were placed 10 to 15 miles apart and at night were illuminated by beacons. Pilots flying at low altitudes, typically under 3,000 feet, could see from one to the next. Today, you can join fellow beacon enthusiasts and locate arrow remnants using Google Maps imagery.

Credit: NG Staff, Jamie Hawk

These three globes were created for a National Geographic Daily News article summarizing the results of a journal publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers spent nine months circumnavigating the world's five major oceans to collect water samples and measure plastic fragment quantities. The globe maps display sample data (colored and graduated based on plastic item quantity) and the modeled plastic accumulation zones (grey polygons) derived from the water samples. Many thanks to Andrés Cozar, the lead scientist from the University of Cádiz, for graciously (and exclusively) providing the data to National Geographic.

Credit: NG Staff, Jamie Hawk. Source: Andrés Cozar, University of Cádiz, Spain

This map was created for a National Geographic Daily News article and illustrates how blue whales frequent waters that overlap with some of the busiest commercial shipping lanes. Scientists tagged blue whales and monitored their movements between 1993 and 2008, proving that blue whales spend their summer months in the shallow waters surrounding the Farallon Islands and Channel Islands, both off the coast of California. Unfortunately, shipping lanes run through these "hot spots" and often result in fatal ship strikes. A special thanks to Ladd Irvine of Oregon State University for providing the data.

*Data exclude values less than six.

Credit: NG Staff, Jamie Hawk. Sources: Ladd Irvine, Oregon State University; USGS

This map supplements a National Geographic Daily News article about the implications for wildlife management when two owl species are found competing for habitat. The Northern spotted owl is an iconic threatened species found in the Pacific Northwest, but has been encroached upon by the barred owl in recent decades. This map conveys the westward expansion of the barred owl, and quite possibly warns of further southern progression.

CREDIT: NG staff, Jamie Hawk. Sources: USGS; Oregon Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit; U.S. Forest Service; IUCN

This locator map was created for a National Geographic Daily News article about the treasure discovered aboard the Mars ship, a 16th Century Swedish Navy war vessel that sunk into the Baltic Sea in 1564. The discovery was the culmination of a 20-year search, and the scientists were rewarded with gold and silver coins.

Credit: NG staff, Jamie Hawk. Source: Richard Lundgren, Ocean Discovery

Who knew that Laysan albatross flew such great distances to feed their chicks? This map supplements a National Geographic Daily News article about the trips of two GPS-tagged albatross, wherein one bird flew a total of 7,500 miles in under three weeks. The USGS ETOPO2 global relief model was used for bathymetry, stylized in Photoshop.

*Preliminary data subject to revision.

Credit: NG Staff, Jamie Hawk. Source: USGS

This map was intended for a National Geographic Magazine feature story that never came to be, therefore, the highly stylized design may seem out of place. Virginia W. Mason of NGM was the original artist of the basemap, so I can't take credit for the beautifully overlaid Photoshop layers. Instead, I was responsible for data acquisition, labeling and final layout, with some minor Ps edits to optimize for the web. I think the map nicely accompanies the beautiful photography in the online article.

Credit: Virginia W. Mason, NG Staff; Jamie Hawk. Sources: NASA; UNEP-WCMC

A simple locator map with globe inset for a National Geographic Daily News article about the new oil boom occurring in smalls towns across Montana and North Dakota where the Bakken Shale Formation lies at their feet.

Credit: NG Staff. Sources: North Dakota Geologic Survey, USGS

This map supplements a National Geographic Daily News article about Arkansas power plants. The EPA's new power plant regulations require Arkansas to reduce their carbon emissions by 44.5% over the next two decades, a notoriously coal-heavy state. With no formal plan to invest in clean energy, Arkansas has fired up two new coal plants in recent years and continues to receive more than half of its electricity from coal.

Credit: Emily Eng, NG Staff; Jamie Hawk, Joey Fening. Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration; EPA; Platts, McGraw Hill Financial.

*Includes wind power, biomass and black liquor

This map supplements a National Geographic Daily News article about Arkansas power plants, demonstrating coal production trends across the continental U.S. The graduated symbols are scaled by million megawatt hours, and are labeled for the nine states showing an increase in coal power production (grey) since 2001. Arkansas came in second place to Nebraska for leading the nation in increasing reliability on the nonrenewable energy source, a contest for which there are no winners.

Credit: Emily Eng, NG Staff; Jamie Hawk, Joey Fening. Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration; EPA; Platts, McGraw Hill Financial.

Tornadoes aren't the only hazard in Oklahoma. Earthquakes have been on the rise in recent years and a growing body of research indicates the phenomena is linked to oil and gas wastewater disposal. This map mainly serves as a locator for story names of a National Geographic Daily News article, but also shows the dense clustering of (>3.0) earthquakes around Oklahoma City, where a fair amount of injection wells exist.

Credit NG staff, Jamie Hawk. Sources: USGS; Oklahoma Geological Survey

This locator map demonstrates how grizzly bear range overlaps with the Heiltsuk First Nation tribal boundary. The National Geographic Daily News article discusses the Heiltsuk's participatory science efforts in counting the local grizzlies, who were shocked to find their land a "hotspot" for grizzly activity.

NG STAFF, JAMIE HAWK. SOURCES: IUCN; HEILTSUK TRIBAL COUNCIL

This locator map and globe inset accompanied a National Geographic Daily News article on looters of Mayan ruins in Guatemala.

Credit: NG Staff, Jamie Hawk

This was my final project for my 2011 cartography course at San Francisco State University. My goal was to create a map of Texas water resources with a focus on the Ogallala Aquifer. I would do a million things differently today, but I keep it around for nostalgia.

Credit: Jamie Hawk 2011. Source: Texas Water Development Board 2004

A soil erosion model completed for the San Pedro Creek watershed (Pacifica, California). I incorporated several raster analysis steps from ESRI's ArcGIS 10 Spatial Analyst extension, including Surface and Overlay toolsets, into the final model.

Credit: Jamie Hawk 2011. Sources: USGS; USDA