My Google Map Blog

A few weeks ago we shared some KMLs from MyReadingMapped. George, the creator of the KMLs, has found a few more KMLs that were not included in that collection and kindly shared them with us.

You can download them individually from the following links:

• Natural Wonders and Phenomena

• Ancient Ruins of South and Central America

• Cities of the Dead: Heaven or Hell

• The travels and research of Alexander Humboldt

• Afanzsy Nikitins explorations of India

• Cabral Cacella’s exploration of Bhutan and Tibet

• Voyage of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros

• Corporate crime that helped set the stage of the 2008 collapse of the world economy

• Teddy Roosevelt explores the Brazilian wilderness

Or as part of the complete collection in a single KMZ.

A big thank you to George for sharing these valuable resources.

The travels and research of Alexander Humboldt.

The post More KMLs from MyReadingMapped appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We have looked at maps created by George of MyReadingMapped many times in the past. However, due to technical issues he shut the site down earlier this year.

He has kindly provided us with some of the KMLs from his vast collection and allowed us to make them available here on GEB. You can download all 155 individual KML files as a ZIP file here. In addition, we have combined them into a single KMZ file and attempted to organize them into folders to make it easier to find what you are interested in. Download the combined KMZ file here.

So what sort of maps can you expect to find?

• Maps of explorers and famous travels including ocean voyages, overland exploration and polar expeditions.
• Maps of ancient civilizations, ruins, lost cities, ghost towns, castles and more.
• Science and the environment:
  • Maps for use in teaching geology, ecology and geography.
  • Maps relating to the oceans.
  • Maps relating to climate change.
  • Maps of fossil sites.
  • Maps about pollution.
  • Maps of disease outbreaks.
• Maps of historic train wrecks, plane crashes and shipwrecks many of which can be seen in Google Earth imagery.
• Maps of wars and historic battles.
• Maps of current events, such as the Trayvon Martin murder case and Boston Marathon Manhunt.
• Maps relating to famous artists.

And many more.

So which are our favourites? To be honest we have not had time to go through them all yet, but they all look interesting and worth a look. Probably the most useful are the ones that can be used in the science classroom, such as the topography of Plate Tectonics or Terrestrial Biomes, amongst others.

Expect to be overwhelmed by the wealth of data.

The post MyReadingMapped KMLs appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We have looked at MyReadingMapped many times in the past. It has recently changed its url from myreadingmapped.blogspot.com, to myreadingmapped.com.

A few of the recent maps to be found on the site that we have not covered in the past are:

• A map of the Nicaragua Grand Canal that enables users to zoom in close on the rivers and valleys involved in terrain and satellite mode in order to determine for themselves the impact on the ecology. It is related to this Scientific American story.

• A map of the Privatization Boondoggles of Local, State and Federal Government that traces the costly boondoggles of privatization.

• A map of U.S. Industrialization (1640-1880) that traces US industrialization in four important time periods, prior to the American Revolution when it was dependent on water power up to the War of 1812 with the introduction of refrigeration, the railroad and the wide spread use of steam power, up to the American Civil War, and as a result of the Civil War. You can even turn on and off layers that indicated the union states and confederate states to understand the economic differences and the impact of industrialization on the Civil War.

• A map of Farms by Type. This documentary, in the form of a Google Map, provides examples of 50 different types of farms around the world.

• A map of Freshwater Biomes. This documentary, in the form of a Google Map, provides examples of Freshwater Biomes.

• A map documenting the battles of the War of 1812 – 1815 between the United States and Great Britain.

• A map documenting the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.

All the maps are displayed on the site using Google’s My Maps, and you can easily view them in Google Earth by downloading them as KML. Just click the ‘share’ button found at the top of the map and select ‘Download KML’.

The map of the proposed Nicaragua Grand Canal is our favourite. We had heard about it in the news and it is nice to be able to explore the locations in Google Earth.

The post Latest from MyReadingMapped appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

Back in 2007 Google first introduced My Maps which allowed anyone to create and share their own maps directly in the Google Maps interface. Since then Google Maps has received a significant upgrade which went live for all users in February this year. The older version, now referred to as ‘classic Google Maps’, still exists and if necessary you can switch back to it by clicking on the question mark in the lower right hand corner of the new Maps, and selecting ‘Return to classic Google Maps’.

Separately, Google created Google Maps Engine, formerly known as Google Earth Builder, which was initially targeted at enterprise customers and later extended for use by nonprofits and researchers in the Google Earth Outreach program. In March last year, Google introduced Maps Engine Lite, a free version of Maps Engine. In October last year, it introduced Maps Engine Pro, a paid for version targeted at small businesses. These last two products were recently renamed My Maps Pro, and My Maps.

Maps Gallery is the place to find maps that users have created and shared publicly.

People who had created custom maps were, until recently, mostly still using the classic My Maps. However, Google is encouraging users to switch over to the new My Maps, and in the near future will transition everyone automatically.

One such user is George Stiller, the creator of MyReadingMapped, an excellent site with a lot of Maps content that we have featured no less than 17 times in the past. For a list of those articles, click here. George decided last week to take the plunge and switch over to the new maps before being automatically upgraded. He has blogged about his experience and I highly recommend that anyone who is facing the upgrade read through his blog posts so that you know what to expect.

The post Moving to the new My Maps appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We’ve shown you a lot from George at MyReadingMapped over the years, and he’s back with another one. This project is called the “Google Map of Geology”, and George describes it as follows:

My latest project is a Google Map of Geology which matches up examples of faults, eskers, monadnocks, folds, fabric, depressions, roof pendants, rift valley, kettles, hoodoos, and the like, that can be seen in Google Map and Google Earth with their geologic terminology. I was surprised to discover that much of the details like stratum, joints, lava field fissures, dykes, talus, etc. can actually be seen in a satellite image and that a specific rock the size of a tor can be plotted.

It’s an amazingly detailed map that George has clearly put a lot of time into. Check it out for yourself on his website, or you can grab this KML file to view it directly in Google Earth.

Nice work, George!

The post Geology in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

George at MyReadingMapped is a hard-working guy. Just a few weeks ago he brought us the map of the El Nino Zone, and he’s previously created a variety of other excellent maps. Now he’s back with a map of Terrestrial Biomes around the world.

In his words:

This documentary, in the form of a Google Map, enables you to zoom in close on the various terrestrial biomes around the world. It is a companion piece to my Google Map of the Geography of the Köppen Climate Classification System, and unlike the Climate Classification map, this map is more of a photo collection of vegetation that survive in various climates. The placemarks within the boxed area have descriptions of the various categories that are then color and symbol coded to the actual locations of ice sheets and polar deserts, rainforests, tundra, taiga, temperate broadleaf forests, temperate steppes, dry stepppes, Mediterranean vegetation, tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests, arid and semiarid deserts, grass and tree savannas, subtropical dry forests, and montane forests.

Learn more on his site, or check out the full map or download the KML file to really dig in.

Great work, George!

The post Terrestrial Biomes in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We’ve all heard about El Nino over the years and how it can affect weather patterns, but it can be a bit tricky to understand the relationship between all of the elements involved in it. According to Fabius Maximus, a monster El Nino may be coming this year.

George at MyReadingMapped has put together some great maps to try to explain it.

In George’s words:

This documentary,in the form of a Google Map, accounts for everything you want to know about the El Niño Zone in a Google Map. Like weather changes, the Galapagos volcanic hotspot, changes in Thermohaline Circulation from Deep Current to Surface Current, the Westerly Winds, the submarine topography, disease outbreaks, food shortages, famine and cultural uprisings. I created this map because I discovered that no map to date put all the factors listed above together in one image. You can even compare today’s weather in the zone by turning on the weather feature in Google Map as shown below.

You can check out the map for yourself on his site or you can grab this KML file to see it inside of Google Earth.

Great work, George!

The post Everything about the El Nino Zone in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

We’ve shown you many of the great stories from George at MyReadingMapped over the past year or so. He creates excellent maps to help explain global issues.

His latest is regarding the recent news about the Ebola Outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone, and all the 2013-2014 activity in regard to MERS. He has a great Google Map of the spread of Ebola outbreaks from 1976-2014 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Outbreaks.

For more, he also has maps on [Severe Ache Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)](http://myreadingmapped.blogspot.com/2012/01/the-worldwide-outbreak-of-sars-2002-2003.html], Mad Cow Disease and the U.S. Meningitis Outbreak of 2012.

Great work, George!

The post Google Maps of recent Ebola and MERS Outbreaks appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

It’s somewhat surprising to me that after all the years that Google Earth Blog has been around, we’ve never seen a file that focuses on the plate tectonics of earth. We’ve discussed various earthquakes numerous times, but never simply the plate tectonics. Thankfully, George at MyReadingMapped has built an excellent map that gives a great overview of the topography of plate tectonics.

From his site:

This documentary, in the form of a Google Map, attempts to put some real world topography to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Plate Tectonic map shown below that is featured on Wikipedia’s Plate Tectonics page. With the above Google map you can see the actual land and submarine topography that form the various tectonic plates. You can see the mid ocean ridges, ocean trenches, submarine volcanoes, and thermal vents that form the edges of the plates rather than rely on an abstract map like that shown below.

As with most of the work that George does, he’s included quite a few details. You can view the full map here or use this link to grab a KML file of it.

For more information, check out the full blog entry on MyReadingMapped. Great work George!

The post The Topography of Plate Tectonics in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi will be kicking off in a few days, and while I expect Google will release some neat tools to help you follow the games, George at MyReadingMapped has already put out a great post with links and info about some of the venues.

George’s post includes a detailed map of the various venues, and you can grab the KML file from there to view everything inside of Google Earth (including a few 3D models, as seen here).

I’m expecting we’ll see many more Olympic-related Google Earth posts coming this week, but please contact us if we miss any. In the meantime, check out the full blog post on MyReadingMapped and start digging in.

The post Mapping the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Google Earth appeared first on Google Earth Blog.