Atlas of Israel

Summary

The Atlas of Israel, edited by D. H. K. Amiran and N. Kadmon of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, is a national atlas published in installments since 1956. This article outlines the unique challenges and solutions involved in its compilation. Firstly, Israel's small area (about 20,700 sq. km.) necessitated much larger map scales than those used in most national atlases, typically ranging from 1:750,000 to 1:2,000,000. Secondly, given the country's rapid and profound geographical changes since the late 19th century, the editors adopted 'time-sequence mapping' as a guiding principle, depicting various themes such as population, agriculture, industry, and landscape at different historical dates to dynamically portray national development. The compilation also grappled with difficulties arising from frequent political boundary changes leading to inconsistent source data, the country's location astride the desert-sown climatic boundary, and extreme topographic contrasts (from nearly 400 meters below sea level at the Dead Sea to 1600 meters above in the mountains). The article concludes by outlining the atlas's fifteen sections, covering topics from geomorphology, geology, and climate to history, population, agriculture, industry, and services, and describes its loose-leaf publication format.