Recent investigations in cognitive psychology and cartography have examined the communicative efficiency of animation and static small-multiple visualizations on knowledge construction and apprehension. In theory, animation may be the most congruent method to represent a dynamic geographic process. However, some have suggested that cartographic animations are too complex and transient, making them difficult to comprehend. Others have demonstrated that static small-multiples facilitate comprehension, inference and learning and afford map-readers interactive capabilities that are unavailable in most conventional animations. This thesis empirically investigates the influences of map-design and temporal resolution on apprehension and inference affordance, in the context of wildfire visualization. A human-subjects experiment was conducted to measure participants task accuracy, response time, and confidence between animated and small-multiple maps. The results reveal the importance of both map design and temporal resolution; small-multiples and fine temporal resolution maps elicit more accurate and more confident responses from readers. While participants performed better with the small-multiple maps, they prefer to view animated maps. The results of this research suggest that map type is an important factor that influences response time, while temporal resolution is significant for accuracy and confidence yet inversely related to participants overall map preference.
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