Dense
cmocean (Thyng et al. 2016) — dense
-
#e6f1f1 -
#a0cde2 -
#76a4e5 -
#7871d5 -
#7642a5 -
#621d62 -
#360e24
A synthetic demo grid, classed with equal intervals — the point is the palette against real basemap ink, not the data. Switch themes to see how much basemap the palette leaves room for.
Metadata
Provenance
Dense carries seawater density in the cmocean set: near-white through pale blue and violet to a dark maroon-purple. Its hue path was chosen so that density and salinity maps side by side are not mistaken for one another, which is the sort of consideration that separates a designed family from a pile of gradients. MIT-licensed, Thyng et al. (2016).
When to use it
Good for concentration and crowding measures where the top end should feel heavy rather than hot — population density, particulate load, biomass. The near-white low end makes it well behaved on pale basemaps, since sparse areas simply do not compete. Keep an eye on the violet middle if your basemap has purple admin boundaries.
License
MIT · source
The color specification carries this license, which is separate from the MIT license on this site. See attribution.