How to Understand Map Features to Navigate

Video Transcript

"Hi this is John Stewart and this is how to understand features that are on your map. All maps have many different features that are going to help you find your way. The first thing that all maps have is what's called a legend. In the legend it's going to show the different types of road. It's going to break down back roads, dirt roads, interstates, highways, main roads, public roads, private roads. It's going to break down all that stuff down. It's going to show other things, ranger stations, hospitals, marine stations, coast guards, different authorities like that. First aid stations anything like that is going to be reported in your legend. It's going to mark them all in different way and allow you to separately pick them out on the map. The next thing that all maps have is what's called a key. A key is what's going to point out how long a certain measurement on the map is. A key is going to say hey, that one inch of this map is ten miles. So that point you can measure city to city and figure out the mileage that separates two cities. And they normally break this down into many different measurements ranging from one inch, centimeters and stuff like that. The other thing that's going to be reported on your map are latitude and longitude. This isn't on all maps but it's normally on more advanced maps. Nautical maps and stuff like that. It's going to, you'll need these latitudes and longitudes to plug into other machines. The last thing that most maps have and they could show are elevation. This is going to be key in some states and maps that show the really high elevations. Mountains, valleys, it's going to show all these by showing different colors on the map. And this is how to use the different features on your map."