Maps: perspective in time
In the last four centuries the description of the lake on maps was naive, fanciful and scarce. Today, satellite maps depict the lake with conventions on a map that correlate the landscape and its features accurately and objectively.
First map of Atitlán from the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan is the earliest known map of Guatemala. Circa 1530-1540
Map of Atitlán in Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán's "Recordación Florida". (1623)
Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán was a descendant of Bernal Díaz del Castillo. He wrote this historical chronicle to remind the Crown that the criollos (descendants of Spaniards) dominated a race of hardened fighters.
Map of the parishes of San Pedro, Sololá, Panajachel and Atitlán, Circa 1768 to 1770.
Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz, a native of Aragón, arrived in Guatemala in 1768 and travelled around the territory, describing it with maps. He opposed the transfer of the capital to the Valle de la Hermita.
Mapa de Atitlán del año 1908 en "The Zoölogy of Lakes Amatitlan and Atitlan", by Seth Eugene Meek.
Meek was an American ichthyologist at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. He was hired by the Guatemalan government to assess whether the quantity and quality of fish food could be increased and to evaluate the possibility of introducing fish from the United States and elsewhere into Lakes Atitlán and Amatitlán.
Google map of Atitlan 2018
Google Maps uses a variety of data sources to produce its maps. This includes GPS data from users' phones, aerial imagery and data from other mapping services. To collect data, Google sends cars and people with devices that collect GPS and other data.
NASA map - cyanobacterial bloom, november 28, 2009
The image clearly reveals why the runoff would end up in the lake. Mountains and volcanoes surround Lake Atitlán, ensuring that all the rain that falls in the basin flows into the lake in a bowl shape. The silver-grey settlements surrounding the lake are another source of pollution. Deforestation is a little harder to see. The forest is a darker shade of green than the fields. The contrast between forested land and agriculture is most evident on the slopes of the San Pedro volcano on the southwestern shore of the lake. Large squares of pale green outline the dark green crown on top of the volcano.
Bathymetric map of Lake Atitlán, June 2014
Bathymetric survey of June 2014 carried out by EPQ and EMPORNAC with the collaboration of AMSCLAE. The map shows depth curves with 50-metre intervals referring to the surface elevation of 1563.28 m a.s.l. at the time of the survey. It can be seen how the upwelling of the volcanoes transformed the caldera by filling in the south side of the lake and how the Quiscab, San Buenaventura and San Francisco rivers have carried sediments and filled in the north side of the lake.
Image of the Lake Atitlán basin, 2019
Empower
Growth
Image of the Atitlán basin looking from the Atitlán Natural Reserve towards the Pacific plains. The relief of the terrain and the depth of the lake can be seen, the latter represented graphically in shades of blue. In the upper left part, the Madre Vieja river basin can be seen. On the upper right, bordering the San Pedro volcano, the edge of the caldera can be seen, which ends to the left of the bay of Santiago and disappears in the foothills of the Atitlán volcano. Image generated by AMSCLAE (2019).
