Thematic Map

Thematic Maps are a representation of a specific theme. The theme is displayed over a base map of some sort. Many maps fall into this category, such as, Chloropleth, Isoline, Flow, Proportional Circle and any map that shows something other than surface information. The theme can be anything from Political Party, Populations, Cell Phone Coverage to the Number of Harry Potter Fans per Country.


The map shown is a Thematic Map of the “Language Families of North American Indigenous Peoples.” A North America outline map is the base map. The colors represent different families of language. The space in which the colors cover are the areas that the language families existed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_people_of_the_Americas