Federal mapping tool that aided first responders in Gulf spill expanded to Arctic
NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A new federal interactive online mapping tool used by emergency responders during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has been expanded to include the Arctic, and will help address numerous challenges in the Arctic posed by increasing ship traffic and proposed energy development.
Project Geo is a new Google Plus Hangout web series dedicated to increasing awareness of Geospatial Technology, industry best practices, and GIS resources.
If you consider yourself a Geospatial expert, hobbyist, or someone who is or would like to get involved with maps, geography, cartography, or anything related to GIS, their team would welcome your participation, input or viewership.
The Google Plus Hangout is hosted by +Adam Simmons, +Andrea Cairola and +Mason Rothman. The three hosts have spent the majority of their careers working in the Geospatial industry spanning from the US military, the US federal government, Education institutes, a previous podcast called WeSeeDC and regular attendance at GIS related events hosted worldwide. With their 30+ years combined of experience in the Geospatial industry and general love of technology there is a good chance they will speak on subjects relevant to the participants and viewers.
Each episode the team covers the latest breaking Geo news followed by a in depth theme for the episode and finally ending with each of the members highlighting a favorite Geo based application whether desktop or mobile based. Tonight's episode focuses on Social Geo and how the two worlds are coming together to create a great experience for users all over the world. Some of the programs to be featured are Foursquare, Highlight, Google Latitude and several more.
In their first four episodes, they've discussed things such as GeoEye, the excellent Geospatial Revolution videos, ASPRS and even Google Earth Blog.
The team is currently planning a new weekly feature that will focus on Google Earth highlighting favorite KMLs, Network Links that have previously been unavailable to the public and a favorite places to view feature. This new feature has the intent of displaying Google Earth's technical background features as well as the beauty of our planet.
Join them every Tuesday evening at 7pm EST on the +Project Geo page, or watch their past videos on their YouTube channel (and also shown below):
Koch Bros Study Finds Global Warming Is Real And Man-Made
Slashdot
bledri writes "The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature are in and Richard Muller, the study's director (formerly an AGW skeptic) declares, 'Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.' The study was funded by the Folger Fund, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates), the Bowes Foundation, the Koch Foundation, and the Getty Foundation."
Why You Should Be More Interested In Mars Than the Olympics
Slashdot
New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler: "Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"
In 2011, the Google Earth Outreach team awarded a first round of Developer Grants to organizations with outstanding mapping ideas. These grants support the technical development of maps and enable nonprofits to implement cutting-edge mapping technology to make an impact on the world.
This year at Google I/O, we announced the 2012 Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants program in a session called "Maps for Good." We were honored to have two developers speaking on behalf of organizations who were awarded a Developer Grant in 2011, including Jake Wall from Save the Elephants and Kevin Bluer from AXS Map. Learn more about their projects, as well as other 2011 grantee work for inspiration on how mapping could bring your nonprofit's work to life.
Over the past few months, we've seen more nonprofits making use of tools like Google Maps Engine and developing applications on Android devices. We expect to see project proposals with innovative ideas that address the world's most pressing problems in the areas of the environment, humanitarian issues, disaster preparedness, at both the local and global level.
Be inspired by how mapping can help spread your nonprofit's message
Visit the Google Earth Outreach website to learn more about this year's Developer Grants program and make sure your organization is in an eligible country. The deadline to apply with your initial project proposal is August 1, 2012 at 11:59pm PST.
Dr. Art Trembanis
Associate Professor
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu 302-831-2498
"We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
-T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
A few years ago, Google pushed out some Street View updates that gave them at least a little bit of coverage on every continent on the planet. The coverage in Antarctica wasn't a very large area, but it was very impressive that they had any down there at all. Now they've added quite a bit more and it now offers quite an amazing look at the continent.
Here is a video that Google has put together to show off some of the new imagery:
Remember that you can access all of this great Street View imagery from directly within Google Earth. Here's a video that shows some tips and tricks on how to do that:
You can also explore many of these areas in 3D thanks to Peter Olsen and the great models that he put together earlier this year. The models are amazingly well done and help provide more context into just how dangerous those expeditions really were.
