Atlas of Israel

Summary

The Atlas of Israel is a national atlas designed to address the distinctive geographical, cartographic, and historical challenges of mapping a small yet highly dynamic country. Given Israel’s limited area (20,700 km²), the atlas employs relatively large scales (1:500,000 to 1:2,000,000) to ensure detailed representation, which demands high accuracy and careful symbol scaling to accommodate concentrated phenomena such as population and industry around Tel Aviv. A core principle is the extensive use of time‑sequence maps to capture the country’s rapid demographic, agricultural, and infrastructural transformations, illustrating the evolution of population, settlements, land use, and climate across multiple historical dates rather than portraying a static picture. The atlas addresses frequent political boundary changes by varying the territorial coverage of maps for different periods. Additional cartographic challenges include representing sharp climatic and topographic contrasts—from Mediterranean landscapes to desert and from the Dead Sea depression to elevated plateaus—through appropriate altitude tints and symbolization. Compiled from diverse sources such as historical records, traveler accounts, statistics, and original research, the atlas comprises fifteen thematic sections spanning cartography, geomorphology, geology, climate, hydrology, biogeography, landscape evolution, history, population, settlement, agriculture, industry and commerce, communications, and services. Published in loose‑leaf format beginning in 1956, the Atlas of Israel provides a continuously updatable, comprehensive geographic portrait, serving as a durable reference that documents the country’s ongoing spatial evolution.