Reading a topographical sheet
A topographical sheet is a large-scale map of a small area. It shows relief, rivers, settlements, roads and land use in one picture. In the ICSE map paper you read a real Survey of India sheet. To practise, this chapter uses one imagined practice sheet that we built ourselves: it is not a real place and it is not copied from any official sheet.
In this lesson you will
- Give the four-figure and six-figure grid reference of a feature, eastings first
- Name the feature at a given grid reference
- Define a contour and find the contour interval of a sheet
- Judge steep and gentle slopes from the spacing of contours
| Item | Imagined practice sheet |
|---|---|
| Grid | Eastings 40 to 50, northings 70 to 80 (100 squares of 1 km) |
| Scale | 1 cm to 0.5 km (RF 1 : 50 000) |
| Contour interval | 20 m |
| Highest point | 478 m (a triangulated height) |
| Lowest ground | about 41 m, where the river leaves the sheet |