Cabin Radio: Yellowknife man creates alternative to Google Earth for northerners. “The North” in this case is northern Canada. “Many northerners use Google Earth to understand the land around them, but the level of detail is limited compared to other cities. Logan Rudkevitch has a solution: Logan Earth.”
Bloomberg: How Google is helping fight climate change, illegal logging, flooding in Africa and a lot more with a service you haven’t heard of. “Google Earth Engine offers its trove of satellite imagery and analysis tools for free, helping groups around the world monitor changes in the environment.”
NASA Landsat Science: Mapping Our Human Footprint from Space. “The world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, according to the UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs. Urban areas are already home to 55% of the world’s population and that figure is expected to grow to 68 percent by 2050…. To improve the understanding of current trends in global urbanization, ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in collaboration with the Google Earth Engine team, are jointly developing the World Settlement Footprint—the world’s most comprehensive dataset on human settlement.”
Deutsche Welle: ‘The Billion Dollar Code’: The battle over Google Earth. “The Netflix miniseries tells in two timelines and four parts how two computer freaks developed their idea, convinced a large corporation and finally the whole world of its interest — only to be robbed of their fame and fortune by a tech giant’s legal ruse. With this German production, Netflix demonstrates once again that the setting of a story is not what matters most, but rather what it is about. The two developers could just as well have been from Japan or South Africa instead of Germany; the core of their tale is universal.”
New York Times: Amateur Fossil Hunters Make Rare Find in U.K. Using Google Earth. “The Hollingworths met in 2016 at a local science festival under the skeleton of a Gorgosaurus, perhaps foreshadowing the couple’s big discovery. While many people turned to sourdough and banana bread recipes to keep occupied through three pandemic lockdowns in England, the couple scoured Google Earth to pinpoint the site of their next excavation.”
Global News: USask Professor creates pig plotted map for locating wild boars on Google Earth. “Ryan Brook has been researching and tracking wild pigs and extremely invasive species across Saskatchewan and Western Canada for over a decade, recording over 54,000 wild pig occurrences over that span…. Brook took all of the data he’s collected over the years and used it to create a ‘pig-pointed’ map. The map can be downloaded and then layered over top of google earth, highlighting the presence of pigs in the provinces’ rural municipalities.”
Bellingcat: The Disappearance of Quitobaquito Springs: Tracking Hydrologic Change with Google Earth Engine. “Establishing a direct causal relationship between ongoing construction work and a system as interconnected and complex as an aquifer is also extremely difficult. Those responsible for the border wall construction project also deny impacting Quitobaquito Springs. When contacted by Bellingcat, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said ‘monsoonal and leaks with the existing liner of the pond’ were more likely behind the falling water levels. Fortunately, open source investigative methods can provide us with valuable information to help address these questions and hypotheses. Not only can we measure the loss of water in the pond from satellite imagery, we can also use other public data sets to evaluate explanations such as drought and agricultural water usage.
MENAFN: Discover Puerto Rico first to offer live guided tours through Google Earth. “Discover Puerto Rico is the first destination to offer live guided tours via Google Earth, transporting at-home wanderlusters to iconic locations on the Island such as Flamenco Beach in Culebra, Toro Verde in Orocovis and Domes Beach in Rincón (pictured left to right), during National Travel and Tourism Week (May 3-9).” Old story but an interesting idea.
PR Newswire: Discover Puerto Rico First to Offer Live Guided Tours Through Google Earth (PRESS RELEASE). “As most of us enter another week of shelter-in-place mandates, Discover Puerto Rico is the first destination to entertain and educate would-be tourists by transporting them through Google Earth on live guided tours throughout the Island. Jorge Montalvo from Patria Tours will be hosting a series of three live guided tours utilizing Google Earth, during National Travel and Tourism Week (May 3-9). Participants will feel like they are actually in Puerto Rico, seeing the Island’s natural wonders, off the beaten path experiences, and cultural offerings, with the ability to interact and ask questions along the way.” The tours are free.
Mashable: Google Earth comes to Firefox and Edge but not Safari (yet). “On Wednesday, Google announced that Earth now works in Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers. The change comes after a six-month beta period, and has been made possible by moving Google Earth onto WebAssembly, a standard for executable programs on the web.”
Google Blog: 1,000 of the most stunning landscapes in Google Earth. “Earth View is a collection of thousands of the planet’s most beautiful landscapes, seen from space…. Today, we’re making our biggest update to Earth View by adding more than 1,000 new images to the collection, bringing the total to more than 2,500 striking landscapes.”
Google Blog: Space out with Google Earth on mobile. “On the Google Earth team, we understand people’s desire to see stars just as much as they want to see Planet Earth. The Google Earth mobile app now offers wide views of our starry universe, just as Earth for the web and Earth Pro have done for some time.”
The Australian: Buried Roman city ‘discovered’ by Google Earth. “Thanks to the clever use of electrical sensors, some ancient sources and Google Earth, Ostia Antica, the excavated, sprawling Roman city that rivals Pompeii is about to get bigger. The buildings set to emerge in the unassuming field on the edge of town could also change the way historians view the once-bustling port at the mouth of the Tiber.”
Google Blog: Create your own maps and stories in Google Earth. “For nearly 15 years, people have turned to Google Earth for a comprehensive view of our planet. But our mission has never been to just show you a static picture of the planet; we want to bring the world to life. With new creation tools now in Google Earth, you can turn our digital globe into your own storytelling canvas, and create a map or story about the places that matter to you.”
University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Google find expands understanding of Nebraska’s icy past. “By analyzing Google Earth images, a trio of Conservation and Survey Division scientists discovered that permafrost was common in northern Nebraska about 26,500 to 19,000 years ago when ice sheets were last at their greatest extent across North America. The discovery adds another dimension to the study of changing climates in Nebraska and the surrounding Great Plains, said Matt Joeckel, director of the Conservation and Survey Division and co-author on the study, which published in the fall edition of Great Plains Research.”
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