Where in the world is...

Greetings, geo fans. Today I'm happy to announce the launch of new imagery for Google Earth. Not wanting to spoil the fun, here are some hints to help you discover where the new imagery coverage is located. Check back tomorrow for the answers and a more complete list of updated areas.

1) Often referred to as The Cape, this land mass is technically an island.

2) The happiest place in Europe has been updated.


3) A major tourist attraction and host of an annual film festival, this city has gotten the star treatment.

4) You can now explore this city in high resolution, though it's not quite what William Gibson envisioned.

5) This tiny city-state is known for it's glitz, glamor, and incredible wealth.


6) You can see this city's expressway renovation project -- which cost close to a billion dollars -- nearly completed.

7) The city of a hundred spires can be viewed with increased clarity.

8) This famous stretch of road was built by returned servicemen as a war memorial.

9) According to several recent surveys, residents in this city experience the world's highest quality of life.

10) Though it's expanded beyond them, this city is famous for its intact renaissance era city walls.

Finally, thanks to our ever-attentive geo community, we were able to correct an anomaly that appeared in our imagery of a golf course in the Netherlands. It turned out to be an image-processing error that happened during our color-correction process, so we've removed it.

Posted by Matt Manolides, GIS Specialist

Tools for tracking hurricane season

Hurricane Hanna is fast approaching the U.S. East Coast with another hurricane, Ike, hot on her heels. To be sure, the 2008 hurricane season, covering the Atlantic basin and the Eastern and mid-Pacific areas, is in full swing. To help keep track of these storms, we've added a "Hurricane Season 2008" folder under "Weather" in Google Earth.

In this folder, you'll find layers for each of the currently active storms of the 2008 Hurricane Season, including hurricanes, cyclones, and tropical storms. These layers, courtesy of the National Hurricane Center, include 72-hour forecasted storm center positions, potential 72-hour storm track areas, and associated advisories (to paraphrase the words of fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan, they tell you the story of the hurricane).

The forecasted center positions are represented by the hurricane-like icons and correspond in size and shape to the intensity and type of storm. As these are estimated positions, potential storm track areas are also included, represented by the red polygons. These polygons encapsulate the relative uncertaintly of the forecasted center point, so that two-thirds of historical forecast errors for a given timestep fall within this boundary. So in other words, these areas represent the areas most likely to be affected by the storm at a given time.

You might also want to take a look at Weather's "Clouds" and "Radar" layers as well. In the "Clouds" layer, derived from hourly-updated, satellite-borne observations, you can clearly discern a storms's distinctive pattern (see below) from other, seemingly amorphous, cloud formations. The "Radar" layer provides ready access to output from 141 National Weather Service and military-operated doppler stations, just like what you might see on your local news. You can see how these active storms are significantly affecting both local and regional weather patterns.

Posted by Pete Giencke, Google Earth Team

Tip of the week: Postcards from Google Earth

Let's say you are on vacation in Paris and you want your friends to be able to see and interact with all the beautiful sights of the City of Lights. A regular postcard is good, but you know you can do better. So open up Google Earth, search for 'Eiffel Tower', find your favorite view of the monument and voilà, you're ready to send a virtual postcard. You decide the best view of the Eiffel Tower is this one:


There are two ways to share your unique postcard. Head to the File menu and select "Email", or simply click on the envelope icon in the toolbar. To send a static image - just like a traditional postcard - select "Email image" (or "Graphic of 3D view" from the dialogue box if you clicked on the envelope). But maybe a simple image isn't enough and you want to send a more interactive postcard, the type of souvenir your friends will be able to fully explore and interact with. Sound like you? Try sending a .KMZ file of your view for your friends and family to see in Google Earth. To do this, click "Email View" in the menu, or "Snapshot of 3D View" from the dialogue box. This will send your friends or family a KMZ file which will fly them directly to the view in Google Earth, allowing them to explore the area for themselves.



Once you choose which type of "postcard" you want to send, you'll be prompted to choose your email service; your JPEG or KMZ will then automatically be attached to the email. Now all that's left for you to do is write "Wish you were here!".

Posted by Aaron Stein, Lat Long Blog Team

We gotta start makin' changes

Today we are relaunching one of our oldest and most popular Global Awareness layers, the Altas of Our Changing Environment by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This Google Earth layer now showcases 187 sites around the world (over twice the original) with a special emphasis on environmental change in Africa over the past few decades.

Tied to the recent publication of the 400 page book, Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, this layer allows you to compare current and historical aerial and satellite imagery, read stories of environmental degradation and restoration, see photographs taken on-location, and leave comments about each site.

Look for UNEP: Atlas of Our Changing Environment under the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth's "Layers" panel (just below the "Search" and "Places"). Or view the same sites on UNEP's Google Maps mashup.

Check out locations like this one in Burkina Faso (below), where a population explosion in the late 70’s has increased farmlands surrounding national parks and hunting reserves.

At this site in southern Tunisia (below), you can see the return of vegetation after the 1993 establishment of Sidi Toui National Park in southern Tunisia, preventing further erosion and desertification.

You can also witness the appearance of road networks in the remote rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the dramatic expansion of many West African cities. See the retreat of glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro, or the loss of highly biodiverse spiny forests to farms in Madagascar.

The changes you will see around the world are really startling, especially considering most of the historic satellite images were take no more than 35 years ago. Explore these amazing environmental transformations and get a grasp on the larger story of humankind’s relationship to planet Earth.

Read more about UNEP's environmental report and hardcover publication for Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment here.

UNEP Mashup

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Sean Askay, Google Earth Outreach Team

Additional information for Hurricane Gustav response

In the days since Hurricane Gustav first appeared on the radar (swiftly followed by several other storms), a team of Googlers has been gathering information we hope will be useful to residents of the affected regions and the relief agencies working to help them.

Imagery from NOAA

After Hurricane Gustav passed on Tuesday, NOAA's Remote Sensing Division began flying rapid response aerial reconnaissance missions of the Mississippi delta region where the storm came ashore. The data they gathered are primarily to help emergency managers visualize conditions on the ground, but are also useful for anyone interested in the impact a major hurricane has on the landscape. The NOAA team has published the data they have collected so far on their official Hurricane Gustav response page, and members of the Google Earth team have processed it into a KML image overlay for easy access by anyone. To view the imagery in Google Earth, click here to download the KML file.

Here's a sample of before & after imagery of battered islands and structures in southern Louisiana:

Before (Image © DigitalGlobe) After (Image courtesy NOAA)

Healthcare information from Direct Relief International

Direct Relief put together a KML layer to aid in their efforts around Hurricane Gustav. They mapped the federally qualified community health centers and free clinics along the U.S. Gulf Coast that make up the core of the medical “safety net” for the region. Combining these facility locations with the path of the hurricane, they are able to target medical material, financial, and other assistance to those places that need it most. The green icons in the layer indicate clinics that received medical supplies from Direct Relief prior to the arrival of the hurricane, the blue icons correspond to non-profit free clinics, and the red correspond to federally qualified community health centers.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Earth Outreach

New data for Georgia

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post explaining why our map of Georgia was blank, and letting users know that that we would soon be adding more data to the region. As promised, we've just released new data for Georgia and a number of other countries. This means that you'll now see labels for cities, and as you zoom into the map more labels will appear for smaller towns. Remember that you can get additional information about an area by turning on the Photos or Wikipedia layers (look for the "More..." button in the upper-right corner of the map). I find the Photos layer to be particularly helpful in getting a feel for a place that I've never visited. Here's what the Photos layer looks like for Georgia's capital city of Tbilisi:



We will continue improving this data and adding more coverage as we have it available. Thank you to our users for their helpful feedback, and for continuing to provide content like photos to make our maps better for everyone.

Posted by Dave Barth, Product Manager, Google Maps

Call for abstracts: Virtual Globes at AGU

Ever wondered where you can find 15,000 geoscientists in one place? Head over to the Google Geo Developers blog to read a guest post from John E. Bailey of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. The post discusses what to look forward to at this year's upcoming American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting and how you can get involved.

Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, Software Engineer