usgs

The Napa earthquake in satellite imagery

October 13, 2014

We recently came across this map in the Maps Gallery which alerted us to the the fact that Google Earth (and Maps) has imagery taken soon after the magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa Valley, California in August. To find out when and where the earthquake took place, we can use the ‘Earthquake’ layer in Google Earth (found in the ‘Gallery’ layer). According to the marker on that layer, provided by the US Geological Survey (USGS), the Earthquake took place at 10:20:44 UTC on August 24, 2014, which was 3:20 a.m. local time. The latest imagery in the region is dated August 24, 2014, and judging from the shadows, was taken in the early afternoon. The whole area has the new 3D imagery, which is created with aerial photography captured before the earthquake, so to see the imagery from 24th August, turn off the 3D buildings layer. You will also not see the imagery in Google Maps, because it also shows the 3D imagery and has no way to turn it off or view historical imagery.

Although hundreds of buildings were damaged, very few collapsed, so in most cases the damage is not visible in the satellite imagery.

The map we referred to above highlights one of the buildings that partially collapsed during the quake, as seen in this news article.

An earthquake damaged building showing debris in the road and a crowd of onlookers.

Four homes burnt down in fire in mobile home park. See this news article.

Collapsed car port roofs. See news article here.

Water on road from ruptured water pipes.

Download this KML file to view the locations in Google Earth.

For our many other posts about earthquakes and the tools in Google Earth relating to earthquakes you can go here.

Exploring earthquake fault lines in Google Earth

July 16, 2014

We’ve talked about Earthquakes quite a lot over the years, as Google Earth is a great tool for visualizing those types of events. However, we’ve not shown very much related to the actual fault lines themselves.

Ervin Malicdem at S1 Expeditions recently took a look at the West and East Valley Fault System in the southern Philippines. The fault line is growing in interest for a simple reason that Ervin explains:

The last known activity along this fault line was the year 1658 and is estimated to be active every 300 years plus or minus 100 years. As of the time of this writing, it has been 356 years ago and is well within the potential period of its movement.

He has created an excellent overlay that shows the fault line in comparison to infrastructure along the path of it.

You can read more on this blog entry or download this KML file to view it in Google Earth.

The USGS also has some solid fault line maps that you can use in Google Earth. If you visit their Quaternary Faults in Google Earth page, you’ll find a variety of KML files that you can download and explore in Google Earth.

Exploring historical imagery with Google Timelapse

May 9, 2013

The historical imagery feature of Google Earth is an amazing tool, allowing you to browse imagery from a handful of different years for any given location on earth. Google has recently been working on a project with the USGS, NASA and TIME called Timelapse, and they’ve released it as a browser-based interactive timeline of imagery for selected locations on earth.

The process for developing this is stunning. From the Google Lat Long Blog:

We started working with the USGS in 2009 to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online. Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 terabytes of data—to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.

They’ve also created a handful of animated GIFs to show some of the timelapses, such as this one that features the Columbia Glacier Retreat from 1984-2011:

Additional animated GIFs can be found on their Google+ page.

You can go check it all out for yourself on the Google Timelapse page, or read more about it on TIME’s website or on the Google Lat Long Blog.

Google Earth A to Z: Earthquakes

July 2, 2012

When earthquakes occur, tools like Google Earth can be very helpful for visualizing the affected areas and working to help those in need of assistance. Relief organizations use Google Earth and Google Maps to lay out the area and determine safe routes to travel, make notes of available medical facilities and things of that nature. Some good examples of that from the past few years include Japan, Haiti and Christchurch.

While rapidly constructed resources are invaluable for situations like these, there are also a handful of tools that work 24/7 to monitor worldwide earthquake activity. The easiest to access is the built-in layer provided by the USGS. Simply select the [Earthquakes] layer inside of the [Gallery] to turn it on. Once you zoom down to an altitude of roughly 1500 miles, the icons will begin to appear and will show every earthquake for the past few decades. Click on any of the icons for details.

For real-time monitoring, the USGS also has an earthquake monitoring tool

Google Earth File. You must have GE installed.

that shows all activity for the past seven days and is quite detailed.

The USGS has quite a few other files available to view and download and we encourage you to check them out on their Earthquake Feeds & Data page.

A Google Earth Odyssey

June 27, 2012

We’ve seen artists use Google Earth as a major part of their project before. Jenny Odell’s work comes to mind (such as “Every Basketball Court in Manhattan“), but there have been neat projects like the USGS “Earth as Art” collection.
Today we’ve got a video from GEB reader ‘Emma’, who created a solo music project called ‘Astrobal’ and contributed to an amazing video that was created by Loïc Jouan. The video features 6500 Google Earth screen captures and is an amazing look at some of the great things you can do with Google Earth.

You’ll notice that many shots make creative use of the “sunlight” feature in Google Earth, which was introduced back in version 4.3. If you’ve not used it before, click the sun icon in the row of buttons along the top of the screen in Google Earth. As you saw in the video, it’s a very powerful feature and certainly one that you should try out.
Also, if you have a desire to create a video like this be sure to refer to the Google Geo Permissions Tool to see what you’re allowed to do.
Great work Emma and Loïc!