This may just be the most exciting day of the year. National Diatomaceous Earth Day is the definition of “barn burner.”

To celebrate the day, I decided to intentionally design a map as stoic as the topic itself. After all, we wouldn’t want our enthusiasm for diatomaceous earths to cloud our cartographic judgment.

I used an LLM to discover that the USGS has a robust US dataset that contains US diatomaceous data. I then asked Spatial Data Creator GPT to fetch it for me. It instead provided me a python script that stripped out the useful diatomaceous earth stuff from the larger USGS dataset, and had it download to my preferred folder.

I then used Web Mapper to plot it with my Swiss topographic-inspired design style.

It’s a just-the-facts map. Happy Diatomaceous Earth Day, everyone. Try to curb your enthusiasm. It’s just another day of days.

View Map Here

Original Prompt

I would like to make a map to celebrate National Diatomaceous Earth Day (U.S.) – Recognizes the natural sedimentary rock material.

Can you please take the attached dataset and create a minimalist web map (HTML, CSS, etc.), with state outlines as well, of Diatomaceious sediment across the US.

The map is for public consumption and is kind of a joke, since the day is so ludicrous. The joke is that we are are going to present this map seriously and solemnly. No subtitles. No exciting legends or descriptions of what the rock is. Just a straightup web map of the data.

Please use the attached style schema for inspiration.