Google Earth is turning out to be a great resource for scientists to visualize and communicate the phenomena they study. You can see the migration patterns of endangered and other threatened animals, based on data collected by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. (The image above shows the range of both the Northern spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl).
Anybody can take geographical data and turn it into a layer on Google Earth. Scientists are doing this in droves. You can also track storms, the paths of solar eclipses, volcano activity, arctic ice melting, bird flu mutations and biomaps of emotional stress levels in different cities (see this Popular Science article for more info).
Since these are all KML files, they could be made into layers on the regular Google Maps as well. Although they wouldn’t look as cool, more people would see them.
FIRST
This post is interesting. What else can you see this being used for in the future?
Google Earth’s most powerful features is the ability to pull in real-time information from other sites and overlay the information for visualization. You can use this data in the way you want.
way cool … now, let’s see some historical data, relating dna and migration … and plate tectonics, and the flow of pollutants around the globe, and the spread of hip hop, etc… i mean anything mashed with anything that spreads through space, get on it.
thanks
Track the monsters of society.
The child molesters.
The major felons.
The location of all gangbanger activity.
Crime spots.
Then, law enforcement can check Google as part 0f their ongoing crime surveillance.
And, civilians can check out an area to see if it is safe to visit or even drive through.
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Track the location of every vehicle accident.
Drivers can check google to insure that they stay clear of unsafe spots.
Insurance companies and lawyers will have evidence of unsafe street engineering.
…………………………….
Track the decline of the bee population.
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Track the migration of college graduates so that states can understand and correct the “brain drain” from their communities.
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Can anyone find an American flag on Google.com today? Today’s date.. July 4 2008..
No luck here…
Thats really cool actually! I’ve always been marveled by animal migrations and how far they travel..good stuff.
Are they following nerd migrations as well?
–Glenn
This is extremely interesting. It could be useful not only for scientists, but also for writers, bloggers and content producers in general. A little bit of creativity is all that one needs to put Google Earth layers to good use.
follow bloggers to conferences, cross-referenced with airline records, so you could have different colors for who paid for their tickets, and who got them paid for … same with hotel rooms
Doesn’t Microsoft’s global map product support KML files now too? Maybe you can see bird migrations with fake billboard ads inserted.
They should make it available via Google Earth plugin for Internet browsers. Then, the audience will explode.
Sounds cool…I am just loving google earth more and more…
IMHO, the future of this is going to be with the integration of GPS and wireless internet services. You could be driving down the woods and see that birds are traveling through there - the possibilities are endless.
GPS+Mobile+Google Earth(Maps) = impressive services.
Well I think bird migration is stupid but this seems like a pretty freaking cool feature.