Intuitive Colormaps for Environmental Visualization

Abstract

Visualizations benefit from the use of intuitive colors, enabling an observer to make use of more automatic, subconscious channels. In this paper, we apply the concept of intuitive color association to the generation of thematic colormaps for the environmental sciences. In particular, we provide custom sets of colorscales for water, atmosphere, land, and vegetation. These have been integrated into the online tool: ColorMoves: The Environment to enable the environmental scientist to tailor them precisely to the data and tasks in a simple drag-and-drop workflow.