brazil

Google Maps Indigenous Territories in Canada and Brazil

July 5, 2017

Google has recently announced that they have added Indigenous Territories for both Canada and Brazil to their mapping products. Read more about it on the Google Blog (Canada, Brazil).

Although the names of indigenous territories can be found in search in both Google Maps and Google Earth, the outlines only show in Google Maps. Even the web version of Google Earth, which largely shares the same database as Google Maps, does not show the outlines. Another issue is that even in Google Maps, there is no way to view all the outlines at once. It would be nice if Google were to add them to Google Earth either as second level admin regions, or a layer on their own.

When looking at Brazil in Google Earth, it is immediately apparent that some areas are not being cleared for cultivation. These are a mix of indigenous territories and protected regions (nature preserves of various kinds).

The indigenous territories are not completely free of visible human activity. The indigenous territory of Kayapó, for example includes a town, a road to the town, some signs of clearing presumably for cultivation and an area that appears to be surface gold mining.

The Bento Rodrigues dam disaster in Google Earth

January 8, 2016

On November 5th, 2015, Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, was inundated in toxic sludge after a mine dam burst. See here for the full story as well as some ground level photos showing the magnitude of the disaster. More here, including a video.

Drag the slider to compare the before and after images. If you do not see the images below or have problems with the slider try refreshing the page. If that does not help then please let us know in the comments what browser you are using.

The dam that collapsed.

The area near the dam.

Over 40 km downstream the town of Barra Longa was affected too.

Wikipedia has a satellite image of the mouth of the river showing the mud reaching the Atlantic Ocean and here is a video showing it from ground level.

To see the above locations in Google Earth and to explore further download this KML file.

The JavaScript code for the ‘before and after’ effect is from here

2015 Brazil floods in Google Earth

August 7, 2015

Earlier this week we looked a flood damage in Georgia and Texas. Thank you to GEB reader for pointing us to imagery of flooding in Magdeburg, Germany in 2013. Find it in Google Earth with this KML file .

We have been aware for some time that there was major flooding in Brazil earlier this year, but have not until recently been able to find relevant imagery. We felt the need to include the year in our post title as a quick internet search revealed the fact that Brazil appears to have had severe floods nearly every year in recent history.

A small settlement near the town of Benjamin Constant, Brazil. Although it is certainly flooded, closer inspection reveals that there are raised walkways between the houses and high water levels are probably common. It is hard to tell from the satellite imagery whether the flooding was severe enough to have caused damage.

Coari, Brazil. Yet again, clearly flooded, but walkways exist in the flooded streets that can be seen in older imagery, suggesting flooding is common and prepared for.

Despite the flooding affecting a very large area (over 2000 km of river) we were only able to find a few relevant recent satellite images. However, we did discover the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” and they have a number of recent satellite images of the area and before and after comparisons of the imagery – usually using Google Earth imagery for the “before” image.

To put them in context we have created a set of Placemarks for Google Earth with links to the relevant “before and after” comparisons. Download this KML file to view them in Google Earth.

The 2014 World Cup Stadiums in Google Earth

June 23, 2014

The 2014 World Cup is well underway, being played in 12 beautiful stadiums across Brazil. All 12 stadiums have awesome 3D models in Google Earth, so we thought we’d show them off to you. Here is an example of a model in Google Earth; this is Arena de São Paulo, located in São Paulo, Brazil.

The other stadiums look equally amazing, many of which seemed to have been auto-generated using Google’s 3D Imagery technique. We’ve put together a Google Earth KML file for you to download, that will fly you directly to each of the 12 stadiums so you can view them for yourself. Grab the file here and have fun exploring!

Google releases Street View imagery for all 12 World Cup stadiums in Brazil

June 5, 2014

The 2014 World Cup is a week away, and Google has just released Street View imagery for all 12 stadiums. As you’d expect, the imagery is very sharp and looks great!

In addition, Google has released imagery for the “painted streets” in Brazil:

To go along with the new imagery in Brazil, they’ve also added fresh Street View imagery in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.

You can read more about these updates on the Google Lat Long Blog, or go explore the stadiums and painted streets for yourself.