Cartography in Southern South America

ICA is committed to engaging with countries throughout the world and promoting and developing the discip­line of cartography at an international level. This month we report on the fourth Argentinean Congress on Cartographic Science and the eleventh National Week of Cartography (IV Congreso de la Ciencia Cartográfica y XI Semana Nacional de Cartografía). It was held from 23rd to 27th June 2008 at the Instituto Geográfico Militar (IGM) in Buenos Aires and sponsored by the Cartographic Association of Argentina (CAC). Assistant director Cnl. Ing. Geóg. Hugo Rubén Bertola welcomed over three hundred participants on behalf of IGM. The event marked the International Year of Planet Earth, and a range of technical, academic and government cartographers attended. Sessions covered topics such as cartography and education, the cadastre for integrated handling of national spatial data, the cartography of natural resources, geomatics on the internet, and spatial analysis, interpolation and interpretation.

During the meeting two-day ‘professional update courses’ were offered by experts, including one on ‘Geodatabases and SDI’ presented by IGM personnel. The opening sessions were also educational and informative, with IGM members telling delegates of developments in geomatics in Argentina. Tcnl.Ing. Eduardo Lauría spoke on prin­ciples of position determination using GPS. Tcnl.Ing. Info. Juan Rickert, and Tcnl.Ing. Geóg. Jorge Crushes addressed IDERA, the Argentinian initiative for the development of a National SDI, and Agrim. Sergio Cimbaro summarised the Argentine Geodesic Reference System, SIRGAS.

CAC president Carmen Alicia King awarded distinctions during the ­meeting: honorary CAC membership to partner organisations the National Academy of Geography and the Military Geographic Institute. There was also the award of a new prize named after Juan Abecian, a long-serving and dedicated Argentinian cartographer who was CAC president for a continual twenty years. The objective of this prize is to stimulate cartographic research and give recognition to the diffusion of cartographic knowledge in the country. Lic. Eugenia Mariana Wright won in the young researcher’s category, whilst Maria Adela Igarzábal de Nistal won the prize for her work in the category ‘scientific advances and technology in cartography’.

Pablo Gran of Chile, vice-president of ICA, gave a presentation about the work of the organisation, inviting all delegates to attend the 24th Inter­national Cartographic Conference in Santiago de Chile in November 2009. This will be the largest ever gathering of cartographers in South America and promises to put Latin American cartography even more firmly on the map.