Here is the first San Francisco edition of the Retrofuture Series maps.
I’ve always avoided making sea level rise maps focused on San Francisco, because @burritojustice already made that map. The retrofuture maps are different enough that I feel I can do this one.
This isn’t a USGS map, but it appears to be USGS-adjacent…stamped as US Coastal Survey/USGS. I’ve added modern hillshade and 218’ of sea level rise—if all the world’s ice caps melted.
I can spend hours looking at this map, just to see the differences between the late-1800s and now. Look closely and you can see all the areas the bay has been filled, defined by the modern hillshade on top of the antique map.
The poster is available for purchase….keep scrolling!
The Retrofuture Series is a time machine–the maps combine elements of the past, the present and the future.
The base maps are rooted in the past–vintage and antique maps that show places very different from our current world.
The hillshade effects are contemporary, and the modern world can be seen shadowing the old maps–freeway embankments, dams and reservoirs, and a variety of earthworks.
The 218′ of sea level rise is the future. When all the world’s ice sheets have melted, this is what our world will look like–flooded coastal cities, valleys, and plains. This is a world thousands of years in the future, that none of us will live to experience.
All sea level rise depicted in these maps is based on estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
