My Google Map Blog

This month saw the fifth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. In memory of the disaster, Google released fresh Street View and aerial imagery. Some was captured soon after the disaster and some much more recently. Because the older aerial imagery would not be visible in the default layer, Google pushed the fresh imagery and other imagery from around the world that had been added earlier into historical imagery. This allowed us to create imagery update maps. This in turn gave us the opportunity to look at a few interesting places in the new imagery.

This month Sri Lanka got Street View. Although the blue outlines do not show in Google Earth, the Street View is available and there is a lot to explore. We also had a look at the Batcave in Street View and some Thailand Street View captured with the Trekker.
 
 
 

Thanks to a tip from GEB reader Jackson, we discovered that several buildings in Lexington, Kentucky have not been rendered correctly in Google’s 3D imagery.
 
 
 
 

The posts we most enjoyed writing this month involved creating animations. The first used Landsat imagery to watch an Antarctic ice sheet as it cracks. Then we had a look at the growth of artificial islands, first in the Persian Gulf region and then the rest of the world.
 
 

Google acquired satellite imaging company Skybox back in 2014 and this month renamed it to Terra Bella. The name change is intended to indicate a change of focus from just a satellite imaging company to pioneering the search for patterns of change in the physical world.
 
 

We had a look at fairy circles in Namibia and Australia and also found similar patterns in other parts of the world. Thank you to GEB reader for linking to this Google Earth Community post on the topic. It includes a KML that shows the extent of fairy circles in Namibia.
 
 

We had a look at the cluster of earthquakes in Oklahoma caused by pumping waste water from drilling operations into deep wells. As was noted in the comments by GEB reader David Newton the vast majority of these quakes were not big enough to cause damage.
 
 

We provided a few tips and tricks for Google Earth:
* We had a look at a technique for caching Google Earth imagery using Google Earth ‘line tour’ feature.
* We created a tool for reducing the size of KML files by reducing the precision of the latitudes and longitudes.
* We showed you how to create custom icons.
* We had a look at advanced techniques for formatting the print options in Google Earth Pro.
 

We showed you how our code for determining whether or not a point is inside a polygon works.
 
 
 
 

We discovered Street View portals to the Moon, Mars and Atlantis.

The post The best of Google Earth for March 2016 appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Thailand has had Street View as far back as 2012. This post on the Google LatLong Blog says that over 150 other places and national treasures have recently received Street View. However, many of the places listed have Street View dated 2014, and the first place mentioned, Sukhothai Historical Park, even has Street View from 2013. So either they have taken a really long time to process the imagery, or they have made a mistake somewhere. Nevertheless, Thailand has some really beautiful places and is well worth a visit.

Expect to see elephants, spikes and intricate carving.

Sukhothai Historical Park. Explore in Street View

Sanctuary of Truth. Explore in Street View

Ancient Siam. Explore in Street View

Be sure to see the LatLong Blog for more locations to explore

The post Street View Trekker visits Thailand appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Starting in 2009 the state of Oklahoma has seen a dramatic increase in seismic activity. According to Wikipedia, it has gone from an average of less than two 3.0+ Mw earthquakes per year to hundreds in 2014 and 2015. This has been caused by increased drilling for oil and the subsequent pumping of waste water into disposal wells deep underground. Read more here. As a result of the increased seismic activity, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has released a new ‘damage map’ showing the risk of damage due to earthquakes significantly increased for the region. Read more about it here and find the map here.

Google Earth has a built in ‘Earthquakes’ layer found in the ‘Gallery’ layer. It only shows earthquakes over 3.0 Mw and as you zoom out it filters out the smaller ones. The result is that when looking at the whole of the continental U.S., Oklahoma doesn’t stand out as being particularly unusual.

However, the ‘Earthquakes’ layer is provided by the USGS and it is possible to obtain more detailed layers directly from them. Go here for automatic live feeds that show recent earthquakes, or here for more advanced queries.

If we choose the “Past 30 Days, M2.5+ Earthquakes” and “Colored by age”, the cluster in Oklahoma immediately becomes apparent:

We can also use the more advanced queries to compare 2008 and 2015:

Earthquakes 2.5+ Mw during 2008.

Earthquakes 2.5+ Mw during 2015.

To see the above in Google Earth download this KML file. The 2008 and 2015 datasets only cover the region around Oklahoma as the USGS website has a limit on the number of quakes allowed in a single query.

The post The Oklahoma Earthquakes appeared first on Google Earth Blog.