Google Earth on the cover of Nature

What on Earth is Google Earth doing on the front cover of Nature, the international weekly journal of science?

This week’s issue contains several pieces on virtual globes, and all are on free access. I’ve written a three-page feature — Virtual globes: The web-wide world – on the various ways scientists are beginning to use virtual globes, such as Google Earth and Nasa’s World Wind. And Al Gore, former US vice-president, who envisioned the Digital Earth in 1998, also gives his thoughts on the new developments, and his initial vision. “Its highest purpose was to use the Earth itself as an organizing metaphor for digital information,” he says in the article.

I discuss the feature in an accompanying podcast.

There is also a two-page Commentary — “Mapping disaster zones” –on the use of Google Earth in humanitarian disasters. It’s authored by Global Connection scientists — Illah Nourbakhsh and Randy Sargent, Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, and Anne Wright, NASA/Ames, California — Brian McClendon and Michael Jones at Google Earth, and Kathryn Cramer.

Nature itself has its lead editorial — Think Global — devoted to a look at spatial thinking in science.

Online, we also have added a couple of extra short boxes to complement the above: one looking briefly at how virtual globes work, and another on what might be next….

During research for these pieces, I interviewed Jack Dangermond, president of ESRI, Brian McClendon, Director Engineering, Google Earth, and many others in the GIS field. As well as discussing virtual globes in science, we also touched on a few other more GIS-related themes — such as the future of Google Earth and ESRI’s upcoming ArcGis Explorer. I’ll blog excerpts from much of this extra material here, though probably not before I get back after the weekend from the AAAS mtg in St Louis.

I also collected an extensive collection of bookmarks to various great resources on GIS, science, and virtual globes during the research; I will upload all of these to my GIS tag on Connotea, NPG’s free social bookmarking service for professionals in science, technology and medicine. If you want to be sure not to miss these sign up to my web feed for this tag.

I’ll be updating my own beta GE maps of avian flu outbreaks over the next few days. Not only will this bring it up to date with recent outbreaks and cases, but it’s a major rebuild of the backend that will make it much easier to update with events. It will also contain a number of related extra overlays, in addition to outbreak and case data, such as poultry densities worldwide (see screenshot below for a preview), and distributions of the main migratory birds suspected of being involved in spread.

Comments welcome as always; don’t be put off by the fact that comments are moderated on this blog; I don’t moderate comments; I only screen to keep it clean of comment spam



4 Comments »
In 2003 with funding from the US National Science Foundation we esablished a global bathymetry data base and made public an application GeoMapApp available at our web site http://www.geomapapp.org. This is a downloadable Java application that runs in Unix, PC Windows XP and Macintosh X. It pioneered the use of Web served tiles like Google Earth for fast responsive. Check it out. It gives much more detail to the ocean floor (>60% of the earth) and has the superb land topography. You can save DEMS, show survet tracks, view multibeam seafloor relief and more.

Like Google Earth you can load and view your own data sets from spreadsheet files (text, or MS Excel). You can save any view as a KMZ files for viewing in Google Earth.

Comment by William B. F. Ryan — February 15, 2006 @ 10:01 pm

For deeper uses of the power of Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)-mediated data in combination with GIS, see GBIF’s Demonstration Projects links in the navigation menu of www.gbif.org. For further examples of ways these technologies can be used, take a look at a some PowerPoint files available from the GBIF communications portal under its Symposia & Workshops link. Basically, most of the concepts in current use are to analyze GBIF-mediated primary scientific data using ecological niche modelling (ENM) to predict changes in species distributions, compare one with another, compare current and past or current and predicted future, and so on. As the Web’s GIS capabilities become more and more democratized, many more innovative means of analysis are expected to arise.

Comment by Meredith Lane — February 15, 2006 @ 10:10 pm

In 2004, we created what I believe was the first virtual globe with the power of Google Earth (and more) www.earthslot.org using Skyline Software TerraExplorer suite of products, largely out of my frustration with how complicated and difficult other standard GIS tools were (like ESRI products). The only other option at the time was WorldWind, which did not have the ease of use in terms customization or the GIS analysis and import tools. We incororated the same 15 m Landsat base imagery as Google Earth now does, plus some higher resolution air photos and satellite imagery. Our mission was really to fill the gap the GE is now filling in a much better way: to take care of the hard art of GIS so that other could easily do the fun stuff. Funded by the NSF, our basic pitch was that these tools were going to become the new paradigm in earth science, earth science education/outreach, and earth science data access — that this was “GIS for the rest of us”. I’m now very pleased to see that GE has validated that hypothesis, and Declan’s article has captured much of why that is. These are exciting times for earth scientists, as most users have not hit the performance limits of GE, but given the demand that now exists, I think the future will continue to be bright for further developments.

As time goes on, I believe that more and more similar tools will come out, each with their own unique capabilities, and overall they will each benefit the scientific community. We’re trying to begin to organize the scientific community around use of these tools. At the American Association of Geograhers meeting this March in Chicago, we will have a session bringing together many of the developers. At the American Geophysical Union meeting this December in San Francisco we will also host a session, focussing on scientific applications and future needs. We’re also starting a workshop series that we hope to take on the road this summer to promote creation of scientific applications. So as the number of tools and applications exand, at EarthSLOT (Earth Science Logistics and Outreach Terrainbases — www.earthslot.org) we hope to track these develoments, host as many quality applications as we can, and serve as a starting point for using the tools. It’s perhas a bit ironic, but its quite likely well be left in the dust by other websites that will emerge from the public to do similar things, but thats really the great thing about these tools — they’re so easy to use that they ARE being used, and likely spawing a whole new breed of amateur earth scientists. The upshot for earth scientists is that we now have an effective means for education and outreach, a process that can only serve to improve public interest and funding for science.

Comment by Matt Nolan — February 16, 2006 @ 3:06 am

En contra del copyright y los estándares cerrados en la información geográfica pública

El Parlamento Europeo empezará a debatir en breve la directiva INSPIRE que, defendiendo aparentemente la idea de establecer una una infraestructura de información espacial en la Unión Europea, trata en la práctica de crear estándares y datos geoes…

Trackback by Juan Freire — February 17, 2006 @ 1:45 am

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