Topographical maps are use to illustrate the landscape. It highlights the elevation of land to help explorers better plan their trips. In class we used clay to create our own mountains. We then sliced them into one inch sections and traced each section on a piece of paper. We then cut out those pieces and stacked them largest to smallest to create a topographical map of out mountain. The following is a link to a video produced by REI that helps to better explain how to read topographical maps. https://youtu.be/CoVcRxza8nI