Goode homolosine projection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Goode homolosine projection of the Earth.

The Goode homolosine projection (or interrupted Goode homolosine projection) is an interrupted, pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps. Its equal-area property makes it useful for raster data representation.

The projection is composed of twelve regions that form six interrupted lobes. The lobes are the top sections of a Mollweide projection, and are carefully grafted on to six interior regions along the equator that are subject to a sinusoidal projection. Because the Mollweide is sometimes referred to as the "homolographic projection," the two names "homolographic" and "sinusoidal" are fused in the name "homolosine," which Goode applied to this projection. If one looks carefully along the edges of the lobes, one can see a subtle discontinuity at approximately the 41st parallels. The equal-area nature of the Goode follows from the fact that its source projections are themselves both equal-area.

The projection was developed in 1923 by John Paul Goode to provide an effective alternative to portraying global areal relationships on the Mercator map.

This projection was quite common in the 1960's, when it gained the nickname "the orange-peel map" from its resemblance to a flattened, hand-peeled rind of that fruit. Since then the Peters projection, which distorts the shapes of the continents, has gained usage.