While area of maps may have been considered to be boring to highly-strung teenagers, it is rapidly becoming a highly scientific and technically laden career.

There are still some sea floors that remain elusive or unexplored, mainly because they weren’t of particular concern. They are so remote from a human perspective, that they warrant little examination. For now anyway, they don’t interfere with sea or air navigation. If geologists can someway discover feasible mineral, oil or gas reserves, then commerce and necessity, perhaps, will induce a change in exploration priority.

To people that plan for contingency, local maps provide some clues to flooding susceptibilities that short term memories have forgotten. With global warming, this type of thing should be a consideration if you are planning your final or long-term home. In recent months within my area alone, language of insurance companies suggests that they may decline their services, such is climate change however subtle from a year to year basis, in combination with construction planning.

New construction projects have taken areas that historically, were flood plains, so where can inevitable rains and their agreement with gravity, go? Within home, is answer.

To people that plan for contingency, somewhat extremely, those very same maps will offer guidance. Some dramatic predictions suggest that “a lump” of a particular volcanic island which is globally renowned for its’ tourism, may slip into sea. The same prediction suggests that it is being undermined by sea, through corrosion. If this happens then a tsunami might demolish everything within fifty miles of seaboards.

It is a prediction, not a guarantee, like most future-related things.

One thing is more certain, perhaps, and that is that maps are essential, even if medium which records them has changed from stone to parchment to disk.