In all areas of life, technology is always changing resulting in ever improving quality, and the field of mapmaking (cartography) is no different. Cartography is one area where the changes are quite evident, as both the type of maps being produced and the equipment used is different from a few years ago. With advances in mapmaking, has come a new way of making and viewing maps. Those involved in aerial mapping have used the emerging technology to refine maps, and to make the jobs of many easier. With the use of aerial maps developers are better able to plan housing developments; governments can plan or redesign cities and traffic flow and geologists can identify ore deposits and land masses. This has also resulted in new storage media, making it easier to carry many maps around with no effort. Maps are easily saved to electronic media such as DVD-ROM, CD-ROMS and flash drives. It is also possible to manipulate these electronically saved maps to suit any purpose. Maps were previously drawn by pens and…, but today maps are produced by taking aerial photographs and using special cartographical software to draw different types of maps. Maps now possible because of technology and which are greatly aided by aerial mapping include: " Economic maps: depicts land use " Topographic maps: depicts land in two dimensions by the use of concentric circles; these maps are useful to geologists, city planners and hikers. " Geological maps: used by geologists to identify rock types, to identify oil and mineral deposits " Biogeographic maps: show animal migration patterns " Environmental maps: shows human activity especially in urban areas. Modern map makers now use computers, plotters, stereoplotters, printers, and scanners to aid them in creating top quality maps. These changes have resulted in more accurate maps that are also more readily available worldwide.