April 17th, 2009
The University of Michigan is continuing their
recent advocacy efforts by hosting an
event focused on science applications of Google Earth. The conference,which will take place on Wednesday, April 22nd (Earth Day!) in Ann Arbor, will feature a series of presentations on active efforts in the natural resource sciences that use Google Earth and KML to visualize and communicate their work.
Additionally, two of the recent
KML in Research contest winners that have Michigan ties will be on hand to discuss their work.
|
| Student Winner - Kerry Ard | Professional Winner - Tyler Erickson |
| |
Our hope is that efforts like this will continue to spawn new work and new resources. Go Blue!
Posted by Ryan Falor, Systems Engineer
Posted in Education | No Comments »
April 17th, 2009
The news came out just a few days ago that the last remaining bridge of ice connecting two islands in Antarctica disintegrated and the Wilkins Ice Shelf is now just a pile of broken ice. Now, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has released a Google Earth time animation showing satellite photos of the break-up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf over the past few weeks, including the final bridge collapse. You can watch the time animation of the photos of the collapse here 
(17 Mbytes). After the file loads, just hit the play button in the time slider that appears in the upper left of Google Earth. This and other interesting Google Earth content is available at the NSIDC site.
via OgleEarth
Related: Arctic Ice Melting Animation
Posted in Google Earth | No Comments »
April 17th, 2009
Vector One offers an article named
Newspaper Publishers Need to Learn to Think Like GIS Professionals.
From the article: "
Most newspapers are sitting on a pile of extremely valuable, and useful information - their records.
All the many years of professionally gathered and written material is a veritable gold mine. But for agencies who are attached to the here and now (i.e. N-e-w-s) then it is kind of like being unable to see the forest for the trees.
Ask any map or GIS professional handling spatial data, cadastral, thematic, environmental or otherwise, and they will immediately point to the value of databases and records. This is how old and new information is analyzed and compared and used to build the future, be it land management, transport systems or crime behaviour. [...] When mentioning geographic information systems (GIS) I am thinking not only of maps for articles, but the actual spatial relationships of information news in a temporal way."
Related stories copied below
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
Posted in media | No Comments »
April 17th, 2009
A final roundup of Macintosh GIS progams that I missed in my original post (they’ll be added to that main listing shortly)
R - An open-source statistical analysis package. See this page for references on using it for geospatial analysis.
JGrass - A Java implementation of GRASS with emphasis on hydrological and geomorphological analysis; uses uDIG as [...]
Posted in Apple, gis | No Comments »
April 17th, 2009
Posted in LBS, gps | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
As your friendly tips guru, I try to keep pretty well-acquainted with all things Earth. But I recently found myself thrown for a loop when the lights got turned off on my virtual world. Google Earth seemed to be in a permanent state of nighttime -- and while I didn't mind flying by night for a while, I was stumped as to how to get things back to normal.
Combing the
Google Earth Help Forum, I found I wasn't the only one perplexed. The cause, as it turns out, is the
NASA Earth City Lights layer, that darkens the planet so you can see light emissions from urban areas. It was switched on, and I didn't know it. You can find it in the Layers panel by clicking
Gallery > NASA > Earth City Lights. If you turn off the layer, you'll find it sheds some light on things (literally!).
Layers hold the key to most of the content available in Google Earth and, since there are so many, it's not always easy to remember which layers to toggle on or off to get the content you want. Looking for the name of a street? Make sure you've turned on the Roads layer. Can't dive under the ocean? Chances are, it's because your Terrain layer is turned off.
Sometimes the layer you need isn't quite intuitive: If you're having trouble viewing the shipwreck of the Titanic, it's probably because you need to turn on your 3D Buildings layer (and you'll be able to check out plenty of other
underwater 3D models, too).
So, when it seems like there's something missing (or, when it's too dark to tell), the Layers panel can be your golden ticket. And don't be too quick to flip the switch back to daytime on the City Lights layer -- there's plenty to see under cover of darkness, too.
Posted by Sarah Gordon, Tips Guru
Posted in Google Earth, Uncategorized | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
Ken Casazza, Vice President, Corporate Development, Penobscot Bay (Penbay) Media, LLC, talks about data modeling standards and the logistics of enterprise GIS. Penbay builds enterprise facilities management solutions using ArcGIS software.
Posted in Facilities | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
Volcanologists can predict Mount Merapi's activity and plan responses.
Posted in Environment/Sustainable Development | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
Since launching Google Map Maker
last June, we have heard a steady stream of users asking us to make the data created with it more available. We have recently
pushed more Map Maker data on to Google Maps and Google Maps
for mobile and now allow users to access the latest Map Maker tiles
through the Maps API.
There are some cases, however, where this is not enough. For example, during last year's hurricane season when we
opened Haiti and Cuba for editing, it would have been useful to combine Map Maker data with other data sets like flooding polygons derived from remote sensing to assess road conditions and populations
affected. We've been approached by several organizations
, including NGOs such as the UN's Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), scientists attending the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference, university students at Stanford, and our users on
our community forum, all asking to get access to the raw data to support planning, analysis and other use cases that can not be easily supported through the
Maps API.
To address those needs, we've announced
recently in Kenya that we are now making Google Map Maker source data for Kenya available for download as kml and shp file. This download license is available for non-profits, government agencies, and individuals to create and enhance their own non-commercial map-related projects as long as attribution is given back to Map Maker. To download the data and see the full terms and conditions
of this license, please
see our download site.
The day after the launch we held a mapping party in the University of Nairobi that was well attended by a mix of amateur and expert mappers from a wide range of organizations. We met with people from Kenyan universities, local media, branches of the UN, branches of the Kenyan government, other NGOs, and are very excited to see in what ways they will use the new downloadable data so we can all collaborate on improving maps for Kenya, and the world.
Happy Mapping!
Posted by Jessica Pfund, GIS Specialist and Lior Ron, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps
Posted in Google Maps | No Comments »
April 16th, 2009
The pace of growth in the technology of Google Earth has grown so fast this year, it is sometimes hard to take notice of the more "mundane" additions. It's been a while since I wrote about the addition of a 3D model in Google Earth. Thanks to a little tweet, I saw a new 3D model of the USS New Jersey Battleship which is located on the river in Camden, New Jersey - seen here with Philadelphia in the background. The model is viewable as part of the 3D Buildings layer (again, I think the layer needs to be re-named with all these non-building 3D objects). You can view it here .
The model was created by A R Baboon who has created many other models in the 3D Warehouse, six of which are in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer.
Posted in 3-D, Google Earth | No Comments »
The University of Michigan is continuing their recent advocacy efforts by hosting an event focused on science applications of Google Earth. The conference,which will take place on Wednesday, April 22nd (Earth Day!) in Ann Arbor, will feature a series of presentations on active efforts in the natural resource sciences that use Google Earth and KML to visualize and communicate their work.
