My Google Map Blog

We kicked off the year by mapping the coverage of satellite imagery dated 2015. We also had a look at a number of sights from 2015 imagery, including the Bento Rodrigues dam disaster and a number of other events. We also had a look at older imagery from 2010 and 2011 that showed the Mississippi River flooding that occurred in those years. January has only seen one imagery update as far as we know.

Street View has not seen any major additions this month but we did have a look at a miniature addition.

In December 2015 Google Earth got an update to the ocean floor data. We compared it with the previous data and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography map that it is partially based on and then later compared it with the Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS) map, which is another of its sources. We also talked about some of the patterns you might see in the data and what their origin is.

Esri released ArcGIS Earth, a Google Earth like application aimed at the professional GIS community.
 
 
 
 

One of our favourite KML developers, Steven Ho, produced an animated Google Earth tour of groups of hikers ascending Mt Xue. Be sure to check out his blog for many other interesting Google Earth or Street View related creations.
 
 

We noticed that Google Earth placemarks now include a photo, a short description and some ‘quick facts’. We first had a look at the placemarks from the “Borders and Labels” layer and then the ones from the “Places” layer.
 
 

We had a look at various ant and termite cities that are visible from space. We were impressed by how common they actually are and were only able to showcase a fraction of what we found.
 
 
 

The three layers unique to Google Earth Pro are expected to be dropped from Google Earth Pro today 29th January, 2016 as they are dependent on Google Maps Engine that is also expected to be shut down today.
 
 

We did a couple of posts expanding on the GEB FAQ. We looked at how to make corrections to the data in placemarks and how to claim ownership of a placemark.
 
 
 

We created a couple of KML-based utilities. One shows a Google Map as an image overlay and the other allows you to create a tour to switch back and forth between two dates so as to spot differences in the imagery.

The post The best of Google Earth for January 2015 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Miniature Wunderland is claimed to be the largest miniature model railway in the world. So, how do you go about capturing Street View of a miniature railway? With miniature cameras on miniature Street View cars of course!

Actually viewing the Street View in Google Earth proved a little difficult. The whole building was captured in 2012 with ordinary Street View and the location of that is shown by blue lines. The new miniature Street View captured in December 2015 is classified as ‘see inside’, which shows as orange dots. Unfortunately only a few of the dots show in Google Earth – there are more in Google Maps. We were, after some trial and error, able to locate all the miniature street View imagery in Google Earth, and once you are in a section you can explore without to much difficulty. We tried creating placemarks so that we could share the start locations but found that Google Earth placemarks can be quite unreliable with Street View. Probably the best ways to explore the new Street View is with this site or Google Maps

There is a lot more than just model railways.

The post Miniature Street View appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Last year, when experimenting with Google Earth popups we created a popup with a Google Map in it. It was intended only as a demonstration of the functionality of Google Earth popups, and not as a permanent service. It still works, but is dependent on a server for its functionality and we make no guarantees that it will work in the future.

However, we have recently been studying KML in detail and one of the features we came across is the ability to refresh an image overlay as if it was a network link. This gave us the idea of putting a Google Map in an image overlay instead of a popup. The advantage of doing it this way is that it does not require an independent server to work. There are disadvantages, however. The map is just an image whereas the popup version was a fully interactive map complete with Street View. With the overlay technique we can provide a few different map types and a Street View image, but they are not interactive. Another problem is that the technique results in a map that is slightly lower resolution than the view in Google Earth. This is because the Google Static Maps API automatically adds a margin to the map and there is no way to include calculations in the process. One way to resolve this would be to trim the edges of the overlay using KML, but that would cut out the Google Logo and copyright notices, which would be a violation of the licence agreement.

To try out the image overlays in Google Earth download this KML file

The standard street map view.

One possible use is to compare satellite imagery between Google Maps and Google Earth.

The Street View overlay knows which way you are looking.

We chose to make the overlays a fixed size, as that works best with the Static Maps API. However, you could make it automatically scale with screen size, change it to a size of your choosing or put it in a different corner by editing the KML file.

It would have been nice to add overlays for maps from other mapping providers, but we couldn’t find any that had a simple API and there may be licensing issues with displaying their maps in Google Earth.

The post A Google Map Image Overlay in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We recently came across this article about an area near the Grand Canyon where you can see circular patches of bare ground in the imagery. The bare patches are believed to be caused by ant nests and so the area has been dubbed the ‘Las Vegas of Ants’.

‘Las Vegas of Ants’, Grand Canyon, Nevada, USA.

Another location that has similar patterns that may be caused by ants is an area in Namibia. There they are known as ‘fairy circles’.

Namib fairy circles.

In Zambia there are large regions that are covered with termite mounds. Although termites look, and behave like ants they are actually more closely related to cockroaches. If you look at the region around Choma, in Southern Zambia, you will notice that all the fields have trees speckled around them, but it is not obvious why from the satellite imagery. However, there is a higher resolution image from the Africa Megaflyover

Termite mounds near Choma, Zambia. According to my sister, a biologist, the termite in question is Macrotermes sp.

Where farmers are using centre-pivot irrigation it is necessary to flatten the termite mounds, but the marks where they were can still be seen in the fields.

Top: a field with uncut trees where the termite mounds are. Centre: uncleared bush with termite mounds showing as lighter patches. Bottom: Circular fields for centre pivot irrigation with termite mounds flattened.

We also came across an area near Choma which has some white dots in the soil that are smaller than the previous termite mounds.

According to my sister, these could be another type of termite (possibly Cubitermes sp.), which makes small grey mounds.

An area near Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. This image was captured during a fire (still burning at the top right) which makes the termite mounds really stand out.

Large termite mounds are common in other countries such as India and Australia. We couldn’t find any that were clearly visible in satellite imagery but we did find this one, known as a cathedral termite mound, in Street View:

A cathedral termite mound, Litchfield Park, Australia

If you look at the satellite view of the area you can just make out some lighter spots in the imagery, which are other cathedral termite mounds and when they are close to the road you can also see them in Street View.

When looking around Namibia we came across some other strange patterns:

Strange patterns that appear to be related to water flow.

We also came across a location in Ethiopia that is featured in Google’s ‘Earth View’ Chrome extension. It also shows dots all over the fields that might be termite mounds but we could not find any ground level photos to confirm it.

Near Tana Lake, Ethiopia

To see all the locations featured in this post in Google Earth download this KML file.

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