What is the difference between a topographic map and a topographic profile?

Question

What is the difference between a topographic map and a topographic profile?

Answer 1

I used to be a topographer.  We would go out in the field and map the area from one specific location by measuring the angle, distance and elevation to various points like hill tops, river banks, corner of buildings and houses, fence corners, wells, etc.  We also would take intermediate measurements so we could draw the map with contour lines for elevations.  This is how we made a topographic map.

For a topographic profile, such as where we were going to put the dam, we would make a topographic profile which was just a line across the topographic map but with a vertical cross section along that line.

So the map is looking down vertically, The profile is looking horizontally at a specific cross section on the map.