Mickey Mellen

Mapping slave history with Google Earth

July 11, 2014

A group of archaeologists in Asheville, North Carolina are using Google Earth to document the history of slavery in their city. The project is described as the following by Audie Cornish of NPR:

In Asheville, North Carolina, an effort is being made to do more in remembering the city’s slave history. A team of archaeologists is using technology to map gravesites in a cemetery that served the black community in that city for generations.

The maps have been around for a while, but in a less than useful fashion. As with many uses of Google Earth, adding geographical context is key as Jeff Keith explains:

Before we made this map and put it on Google Earth, we still had a map, per se. It was, you know, a flat, 2-D representation of the 1,961 graves that in the 1990s, a team of archaeologists went out and probed the earth and actually discovered were all these graves were. But it wasn’t on a map like it is now in terms of being represented in geographical space. Now we can see where it’s situated in the context of Asheville as a whole.

To see their work in action, you can visit the South Asheville Cemetery “online grave viewer”, which uses the Google Earth API to display the info directly on the site.

About Mickey Mellen

Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.

Finding Dinosaurs in Google Earth

July 10, 2014

Pterosaurs, the first flying vertebrates that lived between 66-228 million years ago, went extinct around the end of the Cretaceous period. To help make it easier to understand where they lived, Matthew McLain at Loma Linda University has worked with come colleagues to put together PteroTerra, a Google Earth-powered database of pterosaurs.

An article on CBS News explains why McLain is tackling this project:

“Anybody can just pull this up really fast — the point being that you’d be able to plot where all these different specimens are on Earth, and you might be able to see if there was any sort of trend that maybe we haven’t noticed,” McLain said.

McLain said that other paleontologists have approached him to discuss starting databases for other ancient beasts, like the marine plesiosaur. He would like to create a database of dinosaur footprints and trackways, as a way to get a broader geographical view of dino travel.

To see the data for yourself, visit the PteroTerra website. The map page will give you a good overview, and then you can download the KML file to view all of the data in Google Earth.

Great work, Matthew!

About Mickey Mellen

Using Google Earth for crime analysis

July 9, 2014

We’ve talked about crime on here quite a lot over the years, many of which we discussed in this post last year.

Scott Dickson at Bair Analytics recently wrote a post that talks about some of the ways that he uses Google Earth to help with crime analysis. He talks about some great ways to use basic features, such as:

Another feature I use quite often is the “Show Ruler” tool. This tool allows you to measure distances on your maps. There are a number of criminal law penalty enhancements in Texas that increase penalties for offenses if they occur within a specified distance of a school. This tool allows you to easily determine just how close the offender was to that certain geographic feature.

He also talks about his bigger picture use of Earth:

Google Earth also makes it very easy to export your map as an image file that you can then drop into a report or presentation. I use this feature quite often when I create briefings on crime series or other types of bulletins. The old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words is true. By including maps in your presentations or briefings you can easily communicate geographic relationships. They also make your reports visually appealing.

It’s an excellent use of Google Earth, and it’s worth reading his full post at BairAnalytics.com to learn more.

About Mickey Mellen

The differences between Google Earth and Google Maps

July 8, 2014

Google Earth and Google Maps used to be very different products, but over the past few years they’ve become much more similar. This is largely due to the addition of new features to Google Maps, such as support for 3D Imagery and other features that used to only be available in Google Earth.

The folks at Social Bubble recently wrote a post that discusses some of the difference between Earth and Maps. That inspired us to take it a bit further and lay out some of the differences.

Similarities
To start, there are a handful of similarities between both programs. They both feature the same satellite imagery, allow you to search for locations, save places and get directions. In addition, both feature Street View imagery.

Google Maps
Google Maps offers a few advantages over Google Earth. It keeps your data synced across devices, has excellent turn-by-turn navigation features, and allows you to go into the past with historical Street View imagery. They recently crossed the one billion download mark, a testament to how popular it is.

Google Earth
While Google Maps is more convenient when you’re on the go (largely due to the turn-by-turn navigation), Google Earth has a lot of features that make it more powerful for digging in. Earth offers additional 3D content, makes it easier to stack layers of information, allows you to use special controllers such as the SpaceNavigator and the LEAP Motion, has an excellent flight simulator feature, allows you to view historical aerial imagery, and gives you additional tools such as the ruler and elevation profiles.

What is your favorite feature that you can only find in Google Earth?

About Mickey Mellen

Revisiting Louis Zamperini and Unbroken

July 7, 2014

(We first posted this three years ago, but sadly Louis Zamperini passed away last week so I thought it’d be a good time to check this out again. Enjoy.)

Last year, Laura Hillenbrand released a book titled “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption“, based on the life of Louis Zamperini (details on Amazon). The book has been very popular, quickly becoming a best-seller and recently being picked up by Universal Studios to be turned into a movie.

The life of Zamperini is amazing, and the book is excellent. Zamperini, a world-class runner that competed in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, is drafted into World War II. He fights a number of missions before his plane goes down and he’s trapped in a raft at sea. After 46 days at sea, he floats into the Japanese-controlled Marshall Islands, and he’s placed in various POW camps for the next few years.

In reading the book about his journey, I realized that it would pretty cool to track down his various missions and POW camps in Google Earth. I was right! However, I was unable to find a decent timeline of his life, so I spent a few hours researching it and created one myself. After that, I did more research to find all of those locations in Google Earth and ended up with a pretty cool file.

The file includes locations from his early days (homes, school), the various places he went for military training, the Pacific missions he completed, the POW camps he was placed in, and the various stops on his journey home. You can download the KMZ file here to try it for yourself.

I had hoped that historical imagery might come into play with this, but the old imagery in the Pacific and Japan doesn’t go back nearly far enough (as opposed to Europe, where many locations have historical imagery dating back to the mid-1940’s). However, one good example was Hamilton Field, where he stopped over on his way to Hawaii. The present-day imagery no longer shows a runway, but if you switch to the 1993 imagery you can clearly see the runway still there.

All of that being said, I’m sure the file isn’t perfect. If you make any corrections to it, please email me the updated version (mickey@gearthblog.com) and I’ll update this post.

So, have you read the book? What did you think of it?