With Leslie Trager, treasurer of the New York Map Society. In this illustrated talk, the description of Charlton Island found in The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Thomas James @ (1631) is compared with radar maps developed from NASA satellite images to determine the amount the land has risen in James Bay, Canada, since 1631. Early maps from the Hudson Bay Company supporting this position are shown. Hudson Bay and James Bay, Canada, are in an area that was heavily glaciated during the last ice age. Since the melting of the ice, the land in this area has continued to rise, with marine beaches in some areas now at 500 feet or more above sea level. The rate of rise and the age of these various marine beaches has proven difficult to calculate. To determine the rise in elevation in lower James Bay during the past 400 years, a comparison was made to the land as Thomas James described it in 1631 and maps with contour lines generated from radar surveys from a NASA satellite. Maps from these radar scans can be made with contour lines as refined as 1 meter intervals which allows small, relatively subtle features to be revealed. Using this data, it was determined that during the past 400 years, the land in this area rose 5 meters, compared to earlier estimates of 2 meters. This analysis is confirmed by early maps of this area in James Bay.
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