. Insets
often display the primary mapped area in relation to a larger area. For example, if
the primary map shows the locales of national parks with a county, an inset
displaying the location of that county within the larger state boundary may be
included. Conversely, insets are also used to display areas related to the primary
map but that occur at some far off locale. This type of inset is often used with maps
of the United States whereby Alaska and Hawaii are placed as insets to a map of the
contiguous United States. Finally, insets can be used to clarify areas where features
would otherwise be overcrowded if restricted to the primary mapping area. If the
county map of national parks contained four small, adjacent parks, an inset could
be used to expand that jumbled portion of the map to show the exact spatial extent
of each of the four parks. This type of inset is frequently seen when showing the
small northeastern states on a map of the entire United States