During the last century, advances in aviation and camera technology made topographic mapping with shaded reliefs and elevation contours a cornerstone of modern cartography. More recently, active remote sensing technology like LiDAR has decoupled the cartographer's need for sunlight and revolutionized our ability to observe and map places. This presentation explores the opportunities of LiDAR mapping and argues for a more nuanced understanding of topography, one that reflects the word's ancient Greek roots: 'topos' (place) and 'graphia' (writing) – literally, place writing.

Boyd Shearer has more than five years of creative teaching and course development and over twenty-five years of map publishing, web design, and GIS consulting. He has a worked as a cartographer for the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, where he mapped the social, environmental, and economic conditions of Appalachia. He has published original research on historic parks in Kentucky and has GPS mapped hundreds of miles of recreational trail. He is dedicated to making maps for our national parks and forests. Boyd is presently a Lecturer of mapping and GIS at the University of Kentucky with a research focus in developing hiking trail metrics, lidar and 3D maps, and creating near real-time park weather maps.