Google Maps heads north...way north

Search for [cambridge bay] on Google Maps and you’ll fly to a tiny hamlet located deep in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut in Canada’s Arctic, surrounded by an intricate lacework of tundra, waterways and breaking ice. High above the Arctic circle, it’s a place reachable only by plane or boat. Zoom in on the map, and this isolated village of 1,500 people appears as only a handful of streets, with names like Omingmak (“musk ox”) Street and Tigiganiak (“fox”) Road.


View Larger Map
Cambridge Bay in Google Maps
There are 4,000 years’ worth of stories waiting to be told on this map. Today, we’re setting out on an ambitious mission to tell some of those stories and to build the most comprehensive map of the region to date. It is the furthest north the Google Maps Street View team has traveled in Canada, and our first visit to Nunavut. Using the tools of 21st century cartography, we’re empowering a community and putting Cambridge Bay on the proverbial map of tomorrow.

The hamlet of Cambridge Bay
We’re not doing it alone, but with the help of the community and residents like Chris Kalluk. We first met Chris, who works for the nonprofit Nunavut Tunngavik, last September at our Google Earth Outreach workshop in Vancouver, where he learned how to edit Google Maps data using Google Map Maker. Today Chris played host to a community Map Up event in Cambridge Bay, where village elders, local mapping experts and teenagers from the nearby high school gathered around a dozen Chromebooks and used Map Maker to add new roads, rivers and lakes to the Google Map of Cambridge Bay and Canada's North. But they didn’t stop there. Using both English and Inuktitut, one of Nunavut’s official languages, they added the hospital, daycare, a nine-hole golf course, a territorial park and, finally, the remnants of an ancient Dorset stone longhouse which pre-dates Inuit culture.

Catherine Moats, a member of the Google Map Maker Team, working with Chris Kalluk and others at the Community Map Up.
Now we’re pedaling the Street View trike around the gravel roads of the hamlet and using a tripod—the same used to capture business interiors—to collect imagery of these amazing places. We’ll train Chris and others in the community to use some of this equipment so they can travel to other communities in Nunavut and continue to build the most comprehensive and accurate map of Canada’s Arctic. As Chris put it to us, “This is a place with a vast amount of local knowledge and a rich history. By putting these tools in the hands of our people, we will tell Nunavut’s story to the world.”

The Street View Trike collecting imagery of Cambridge Bay.
So stay tuned, world. We look forward to sharing with you the spectacular beauty and rich culture of Canada’s Arctic—one of the most isolated places on the planet that will soon be, thanks to the people of Cambridge Bay, just a click away.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach team

AXS Map makes it easy to find accessible businesses in your community

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Jason DaSilva from AXS Lab, a non-profit organization focused on accessibility issues in Brooklyn, New York. When I Walk was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to showcase how When I Walk has used the Google Places API to make finding accessible businesses easier for anyone in a wheelchair.

When I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis seven years ago, I didn't realize how much it would affect my freedom and decisions in regards to where I could or could not go. Not being able to walk created barriers. For example, on the street lined with stores and businesses, I'd only be able to get into one out of 10 of these places. Only the places that had wheelchair accessible entrances were available to me.

So I came up with an idea. Why not document and track all be accessible places around us? If there was an online database of accessibility hotspots in any given city, the disabled community and their supporters can share all the places that are accessible with each other. Google Maps provided the easy-to-use map platform for people to search and find these places. So voilà, with help from funders and our developer Kevin Bluer, AXS Map (pronounced “access map”) was born.


Watch a short video about AXSmap.
With AXS Map, you can document how easy it is to enter a restaurant with a wheelchair or cane or whether the restroom is wheelchair-accessible. With all of this information available on the web, the disabled community is able to easily find places to eat, sleep or get a haircut. With our recently launched mobile app for Android, built using the Google Places API, AXS Map users can now find and review businesses while they’re on the go. Download the app now and share a review on the accessibility of a business or public place. The more you review, the better AXS Map gets!

Learn how to use the AXS Map app to review places.
I hope that AXS Map makes it easier for you or someone close to you to find accessible businesses in your own community.

Posted by Jason DaSilva, Founder, AXS Lab

Maps for good: Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants 2012

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.

Good luck to all of this year’s applicants!

Posted by Tanya Birch, Google Earth Outreach team

Where the roads aren't - and why it matters

Editor's note: Last week we published a series of blog posts about our activities at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The post below is by Rebecca Moore, manager of the Google Earth Outreach team.

We were excited to unveil at the Rio+20 Conference the initial fruits of a unique collaboration with a member of the European Parliament and the Society for Conservation Biology: a global, interactive map of the world’s “Roadless Areas.”

The project came about when we were approached by MEP Kriton Arsenis, the European Parliament's Rapporteur on forests. He explained that, while most people using Google Maps want to know which roads will get them from point A to point B, the same information is useful for conservationists who want to know where roads aren’t. In his words:

The concept of "roadless areas" is a well-established conservation measure coming from conservation biologists from all around the globe. The idea is that roads in most parts of the world lead to the unmanageable private access to the natural resources of an area, most often leading to ecosystem degradation and without the consent of the local and indigenous communities. Keeping an area roadless means that the specific territory is shielded against such exogenous pressures, thus sustaining its ecosystem services at the maximum possible level. An important tool which will drive environmental, development as well as global climate change policy forward will be the Google development of an interactive satellite map of the world's roadless areas.

We were intrigued by Kriton’s idea, so we decided to give it a try.

Start with where the Roads are

We started by taking all the road data (plus rail and navigable waterways) in Google Maps today, and importing that into our Google Earth Engine platform for analysis. For example, here is what the road network in Australia looks like when zoomed out to country-scale:


Then figure out where the roads aren't

Based upon advice from Kriton Arsenis and his project collaborators in the Society for Conservation Biology, we decided to define a “Roadless Area” (for the purposes of this prototype map) as any area of land more than ten kilometers from the nearest road. Using the global-scale spatial-analytic capabilities of Google Earth Engine, we then generated this raster map, such that every pixel in the map is color-coded based on distance from the nearest road. Every pixel colored green is at least 10km from the nearest road, and therefore considered part of a Roadless Area. For example:


Or consider the island of Madagascar, home to some of the most unique species on Earth:


From these maps it becomes more apparent how the simple construction of new roads can fragment and disturb habitats, potentially driving threatened species closer to extinction.

Finally we decided to try running this “Roadless Area” algorithm at global-scale:


Large roadless areas are readily apparent such as the Amazon and Indonesian rainforests, Canadian boreal forest and Sahara desert.

Caveats and Next Steps

The road data used to produce these maps inevitably contains inaccuracies and omissions. The good news is that Google already has a tool, Google Map Maker, that can be used by anyone to submit new or corrected map data, and in fact this tool is already being used in partnership with the United Nations to support global emergency response. We look forward to continued development of this prototype, which can help to turn the abstract concept of “Roadless Areas” into something quite concrete and, we hope, useful to policymakers, scientists and communities around the world. To explore these Roadless Area maps yourself, visit the Google Earth Engine Map Gallery.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine

Towards Crowdsourcing Forest Monitoring: lessons from SAD powered by Google Earth Engine

Editor's note: Throughout this week we'll be publishing a series of blog posts about our activities at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. This guest post is from Google Earth Engine partner Carlos Souza of Imazon. 

In the last seven years Brazil has reduced deforestation considerably, and forest monitoring has been a key part of this effort. Imazon, a Brazilian NGO working to promote sustainable development in the Amazon, has developed a forest monitoring system called SAD, and has been working with Google to integrate Google Earth Engine into our work. We’re now ready to share our progress and to take the next step in our efforts to crowdsource forest monitoring in Brazil and, potentially, the rest of the world.

First a bit about Imazon and our work. SAD is an acronym, in Portuguese, for Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento, or Deforestation Alert System. This system detects and measures deforestation and forest degradation in Brazil by analyzing MODIS satellite imagery. The idea is to track deforestation in the same way the government tracks inflation, making it a regularly updated indicator of the overall health of the country.

SAD analysis is quite complex, involving a great deal of satellite data. The end result of the analysis is a ratio of soil, photosynthetic vegetation, and non-photosyntheic vegetation for each pixel in a MODIS image covering the Brazilian Amazon. SAD tracks and reports deforestation and forest degradation on a monthly basis by calculating changes in this ratio for satellite images acquired at different times. We provide this map, along with deforestation alerts, to key authorities working to fight illegal deforestation in the Amazon.

This past weekend at Google’s “From the Ground to the Cloud” event at Rio+20 we proudly announced the next step in the evolution of SAD: SAD-EE, powered by Google Earth Engine. Starting in July, Imazon's monthly deforestation reports -- which includes deforestation happening while we are here at Rio+20 -- will be generated by SAD-EE. 






SAD-EE improves Imazon’s forest monitoring program in several ways:

• We can now access and process the data using Google’s cloud, which dramatically changes how we work. For instance, during the testing phase of using SAD-EE we reduced the amount of time we spend downloading and managing the very large data sets of MODIS images by 50%, and analysis in the cloud is much faster than on our desktop computers. Getting this information to the authorities faster can be translated into several hectares of forests saved each month 
  
• SAD-EE is integrated with the Internet, mobile phone and computer tablet technologies, making it easier for local organizations to access it. 
•  The system can be used outside Brazil, allowing other tropical forest countries to monitor their forests. Indeed, there is now a project to make this happen through a partnership with Google and the World Resources Institute, via the Global Forest Watch Program.
  
  
  

  

  SAD-EE's reporting tool

  For me, the most exciting aspect of SAD-EE is that the system demonstrates the potential for Google Earth Engine to become a multi-sensor, multi-algorithm, multi-technology, crowdsourcing environmental monitoring platform. As Google Earth Engine evolves, it is allowing scientists and remote sensing users to share their knowledge and tools and enabling large groups of people to track and report changes in our planet.
  
  Posted by Carlos Souza, Senior Researcher, Imazon

The Surui Cultural Map

(Cross-posted from the Google Green Blog)

Editor's Note: This week we're at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. We're sharing a series of posts about our activities at the conference on the Green Blog; in this cross-post we've gone into more detail about one announcement taking place there.

This week at the Rio+20 conference, the Surui tribe of the Brazilian Amazon are launching their Surui Cultural Map on Google Earth. This represents the culmination of a unique five-year collaboration between the Surui people and Google, which began in June 2007 when Chief Almir Surui first visited Google and proposed a partnership. The story of that visit, and the remarkable project that followed, are told in a new short documentary also launching here at Rio+20: “Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops: Carbon and Culture.”



Training the Surui youth as mapmakers
Over three visits to the Surui territory between 2008 and last month, our Google Earth Outreach team taught Surui youth how to take photos and videos and to collect stories from their elders (such as from the time before first contact with the modern world). Then they learned how to upload these to the Google cloud using tools like Picasa, Docs, and YouTube. From there we used Spreadsheet Mapper 3 to bind it all together to create a Google Earth KML of their map, which contains almost 300 sites.

Map highlights
Through this project, my team has learned that maps are an expression of culture. Mapmakers refer to the “atomic element” of a map as a point of interest, or POI. The Surui mapmakers created POIs that reflect their traditional culture’s close interdependency with their forest home. So instead of hotels and gas stations, on the Surui map you’ll find the locations of parrots and toucans, or the three kinds of trees necessary to make their bows and arrows. You’ll learn where to find the Acai trees (which provide delicious fruit as well as the thatch for their maloca longhouses), the locations of good hunting grounds for the porcao (wild pig), and where the jaguar roam (jaguars have particular spiritual significance to the Surui people and figure in their creation myth). There are also sites and stories of historical battles with other tribes and with the white settlers who started arriving after “first contact” in 1969. Here’s an example POI for the Jenipapo tree:

The text reads: “Jenipapo fruit is produced by the jenipapo tree, which reaches twenty feet high. From the meaty part of the green fruit, an ink is extracted with which human skin can be painted. This makes the fruit very important for the Surui, because the art of painting is always included in everything that they do, especially in celebrations and rituals. The art of painting is one of the things most valued by Paiter. Each occasion calls for a different type of painting.”

Here’s a rich storytelling tour of the Surui Cultural Map, narrated by Chief Almir and the Surui youth who were the star mapmakers:



As Chief Almir says at the conclusion of the Surui people’s Google Earth tour:

Without the forest, our entire culture would disappear. And without our culture, the forest would have disappeared a long time ago. It’s important to live in a sustainable way and to strengthen those whose livelihoods directly depend on a healthy ecosystem. We have a 50-year sustainability plan, which includes solutions for our territory. An example is the Surui Carbon Project, which uses technology to monitor the carbon stock of forest and trade it in the market for carbon credits. Our hope is that we can come together virtually and in person, and that we can find and implement solutions together.

It’s been a great honor for us to work with the Surui people and to experience their world view, especially to see how they blend their traditional knowledge and culture with modern technology. We’ve learned from Chief Almir that partnerships, consensus and collaboration are central; in that spirit, we’d like to thank our partners on this project: ECAM, Kanindé and Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol, who has documented the life of the Surui people for more than twenty years.

You can watch a video of the  tour or download it in English or Portuguese. To learn more about the Surui tribe, known as “Paiter Surui,” please visit www.paiter.org.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine

Visualize the history of the Golden Gate Bridge & Crissy Field

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Ben Fash from the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the nonprofit partner of the Golden Gate National Parks. The Parks Conservancy was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We are excited to showcase the Parks Conservancy’s innovative use of Google Earth and KML tours.

The Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary celebration recently culminated in a waterfront festival, and hundreds of thousands of people joined hands on Crissy Field -- a beautiful 100-acre national park site at the foot of the bridge. As we celebrated the bridge with the community on Crissy Field, we also celebrated 11 years of the restoration of the cultural and natural resources at this site.

Few people remember that when the Golden Gate Fiesta was held on Crissy Field to open the bridge in 1937, the community was standing on an army airfield, which was subsequently abandoned and served as a dump for many years. In our new Google Earth tour, “The Transformation of Crissy Field,” television journalist Doug McConnell walks through the history of Crissy Field, with a focus on the community-led restoration effort completed in 2001.


The tour includes photos, historic maps, drawings, and satellite imagery with animated SketchUp models to create a virtual journey through the changes from a diverse salt-marsh ecosystem to race-track, army airfield, dumping ground, and finally to beloved national park.

It also shines a light on the Crissy Field Center, a dynamic hub of youth engagement for the Golden Gate National Parks. A partnership program of the Parks Conservancy, National Park Service, and Presidio Trust, the Center has served hundreds of thousands of youth in its ten years of existence, with a focus on those who traditionally have had little—if any—access to national parks. Just as Crissy Field itself serves as an outdoor classroom for youth, the Google Earth tour serves as an educational tool to inspire new generations with this brilliant story of what is possible when a community rallies to create welcoming public space.

At the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, Crissy Field is a story of transformation.
We believe it is the duty of all human beings to protect ecosystems that are vital to our own survival and that of the other species with whom we share this planet. Now in the 21st century, it is critical that communities join hands to restore the damage that has been done to the environment, reversing trends that have been set and reviving a love for the lands and oceans that we depend on. It is our hope that the story of Crissy Field will serve as an example and will inspire many people to contribute to the stewardship of their own public lands.

We welcome you to visit us online to learn more about our work and how to get involved in the Golden Gate National Parks. While you’re there, view the narrated tour, or download the KML to view it interactively in Google Earth!

Posted by Ben Fash, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy

The never-ending quest for the perfect map

(Cross posted from the Official Google Blog)

For the last decade we’ve obsessed over building great maps for our users—maps that are totally comprehensive (we’re shooting for literally the whole world), ever more accurate and incredibly easy to navigate.

Comprehensiveness

It’s a pretty limited search engine that only draws from a subset of sources. In the same way, it’s not much of a map that leaves you stranded the moment you step off the highway or visit a new country. Over the last few years we’ve been building a comprehensive base map of the entire globe—based on public and commercial data, imagery from every level (satellite, aerial and street level) and the collective knowledge of our millions of users.

Today, we’re taking another step forward with our Street View Trekker. You’ve seen our cars, trikes, snowmobiles and trolleys—but wheels only get you so far. There’s a whole wilderness out there that is only accessible by foot. Trekker solves that problem by enabling us to photograph beautiful places such as the Grand Canyon so anyone can explore them. All the equipment fits in this one backpack, and we’ve already taken it out on the slopes.

Luc Vincent, engineering director, taking the Street View Trekker for a trial run in Tahoe

Accuracy

The next attribute map makers obsess over is accuracy. We still have a way to go because the world is constantly changing—with new houses, cities and parks appearing all the time—it’s a never ending job. But by cross-checking the data we have, we can significantly improve the accuracy of our maps. Turns out our users are as passionate about the quality of Google Maps as we are, and they give us great feedback on where we can do better. We make thousands of edits a day based on user feedback through our Report a Problem tool and via Map Maker, which we launched in 2008. Today we’re announcing the expansion of Map Maker to South Africa and Egypt, and to 10 more countries in the next few weeks: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

Usability

The final element of the perfect map is usability. It’s hard to remember what digital maps were like before Google Maps went live in 2005, and the huge technological breakthroughs that transformed clicking on arrows and waiting, to simply dragging a map with a mouse and watching it render smoothly and quickly. Plus, we added one single search box. Today we have thousands of data sources that feed into our maps making them a rich and interactive experience on any device—from driving directions to transit and indoor maps to restaurant reviews.

People have been asking for the ability to use our maps offline on their mobile phones. So today we’re announcing that offline Google Maps for Android are coming in the next few weeks. Users will be able to take maps offline from more than 100 countries. This means that the next time you are on the subway, or don’t have a data connection, you can still use our maps.

The next dimension

An important next step in improving all of these areas—comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of our maps—is the ability to model the world in 3D. Since 2006, we’ve had textured 3D buildings in Google Earth, and today we are excited to announce that we will begin adding 3D models to entire metropolitan areas to Google Earth on mobile devices. This is possible thanks to a combination of our new imagery rendering techniques and computer vision that let us automatically create 3D cityscapes, complete with buildings, terrain and even landscaping, from 45-degree aerial imagery. By the end of the year we aim to have 3D coverage for metropolitan areas with a combined population of 300 million people.

I have been working on mapping technology most of my life. We’ve made more progress, more quickly as an industry than I ever imagined possible. And we expect innovation to speed-up even more over the next few years. While we may never create the perfect map … we’re going to get much, much closer than we are today.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Maps

The HALO Trust uses Google Earth to help get mines out of the ground, now

Founded in 1988, The HALO Trust is the world’s oldest and largest humanitarian landmine clearance organization. Dedicated to the removal of the hazardous debris of war, HALO has cleared over 414,000 acres of land and removed over 13 million landmines and other explosive remnants. Their work allows families to return home, land to be used for agriculture, roads to be re-opened, and children to walk to school safely.

When HALO visited the Google Earth Outreach team at Google headquarters two years ago, we were proud to hear how they use our tools to clear landmines around the world. Since 2006, they have leveraged their Google Earth Pro grant for minefield survey, data validation, quality control and to produce maps for donors, governments, and other NGOs. They have since received a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant to fund creation of their Explore a Minefield project.

Now you can take a tour of the mine-affected areas of Cambodia and Angola with the HALO Trust using Google Earth, and see how landmine removal efforts have helped build safe and vibrant communities. Angelina Jolie, who has visited mine removal efforts in a number of war-torn countries, lent her voice for the narration.

Learn how HALO’s Cambodia staff maps and clears mined areas. Watch the YouTube video or download the tour in Google Earth.
Watching these tours, we were amazed at the sheer number of mines that were laid in Cambodia and Angola and the size and scope of HALO’s effort to clear them in each of the 13 countries where they work. Using Google Earth’s historical imagery to provide time-lapse images of mined areas before and after clearance, they can clearly show how landmine removal is helping war-torn communities rebuild. While this scale of landmine clearance is staggering and inspiring, the tours also show the minefields that still remain.

Learn about Angola’s war-torn history and how HALO is helping communities to rebuild. Watch the YouTube video or download the tour in Google Earth.
To learn more about how you can help The HALO Trust clear these remaining minefields, visit their website.

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach

Google Maps Engine grants for nonprofits

Today, we are excited to announce a new addition to the Google Earth Outreach Grants program. Now, eligible nonprofit organizations in the U.S., U.K., Brazil and Canada can apply for grants of Google Maps Engine, a platform formerly known as Google Earth Builder, for hosting, storing, managing, and styling map data.

Google Earth Builder has been available to businesses since August 2011. A new name is just the beginning. Several nonprofit organizations, including World Wildlife Fund and Eyes on the Forest (a coalition of Sumatran NGOs), as well as Living Oceans Society, have already been using the platform to tell stories and engage their constituents in an interactive way.

It's no secret that the natural habitats of wildlife such as tigers, rhinos, elephants and orangutans are disappearing at an alarming rate. The World Wildlife Fund, in partnership with Eyes on the Forest, uses Google Maps Engine to develop and publish Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data showing the reduction of ranges for these four endangered species. In addition, they are publishing maps on floral diversity and change in carbon stocks and forest cover over time.


While some nonprofits focus on terrestrial conservation, Living Oceans Society works to protect the British Columbia coastline. As GIS and mapping specialists, they create and publish maps such as kayak routes, dive sites, eelgrass beds, and oil and tanker traffic to inform residents of the recreational value of natural habitats as well as inform policy-makers about the risks that increasing industrial practices pose to the ecosystem.


With this addition of Google Maps Engine to the Google Earth Outreach Grants program, we’re releasing three new Google Maps Engine tutorials to educate nonprofits on how to use the product. We’ll also be hosting a Google+ Hangout on the Google Earth Plus page to provide more information about the program and answer questions from potential grant recipients. Tune in by visiting the Google Earth Plus page on May 24th at 10:30 a.m. PDT to join the Hangout on Air.

More information about eligibility for a Google Maps Engine grant and how organizations can apply is available on the Google Earth Outreach Maps Engine for Nonprofits page.

Posted by Tanya Birch, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Carbon stocks and cultural mapping in the Amazon Rainforest

In 2008, the Google Earth Outreach team visited the Surui tribe in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest for the first time, upon request of Chief Almir Naramagoya Surui. Their goal was to learn how to share and preserve their culture using Google Maps, Google Earth, and other online tools including Picasa, YouTube, and Blogger. We were honored to play a role in empowering the indigenous people of a region that had been ravaged by illegal logging to tell their stories to millions of people around the world. Filmmaker Denise Zmekhol documented this experience in a video called Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops.

Then, in 2009, Rebecca Moore, head of the Google Earth Outreach team, returned to the Amazon to teach the Surui about Open Data Kit (ODK), a new suite of open-source tools that streamlines the process of data collection in the field with Android phones. Using ODK, the tribe takes pictures of what’s happening on the ground for proof of the illegal logging that is taking place on their territory.

The Surui also began using ODK and Google Earth to visualize the carbon reserves of the forest they live in. This process is part of their 50-year sustainability plan, and serves as a model for how indigenous tribes who have lost much of their ancestral land to logging and deforestation can thrive with the help of a new emerging market based on carbon credits.

Chief Almir, in his joint presentation with Rebecca Moore, celebrated the validation of the Surui Forest Carbon Project on Saturday, May 12th at TEDxBeloHorizonte in Brazil. This is a groundbreaking outcome for the Surui people for two reasons. First, this is the first indigenous-led project in the world to be validated. Equally important, it’s also the first REDD+ project in Brazil to get certified by both the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) to sell stocks in the carbon market, and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Gold Standard to get extra gains from other ‘co-benefits’ of forest preservation, such as increasing biodiversity for a region, or preserving the livelihood of local communities who depend on the forest. The project was validated by Rainforest Alliance and the Brazilian NGO IMAFLORA.

The Surui and their partner IDESAM have already measured a baseline of carbon stored in the indigenous reserve and will avoid the emission of 6 million tons of carbon over the 30 years of the life of the project by avoiding the deforestation of 40 thousand hectares of forests and protecting an additional 200,000 hectares. Coordinated by Forest Trends, the Surui will work with the Brazilian government and those who want to neutralize their emissions to develop financial mechanisms to ensure the forest is protected and well managed, while also assuring the quality of life for the Surui community. The primary financial vehicle has been designed by FUNBIO, a Brazilian NGO specializing in creating financial mechanisms for conservation.

The TEDx talk was made on the heels of another Google Earth Outreach workshop held in Cacoal, Rondonia in May -- this one intended to teach the Surui people how to create a cultural map using Google Earth. Creating a new platform for storytelling online and an interactive repository for shared memories, the Surui students have interviewed their elders to map their ancestral sites, such as the site of first contact with western civilization in 1969, places where the tribes battled with colonists in the 1970s, as well as places of interest, like sightings of jaguars, capybaras and toucans. Once the Surui students have completed the first version of the map, it will be available for all to explore both as a Google Earth KML, powered by Spreadsheet Mapper 3.0, and as a narrated tour in Google Earth.

We are very excited for Chief Almir, the Surui people, and their partners, including ECAM, Amazon Conservation Team, Forest Trends, IDESAM, Kaninde, FUNBIO, among others, who are entering into a new phase of global significance with the validation of the Surui Forest Carbon Project and the Surui Cultural Map.

Posted by Tanya Birch, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Spreadsheet Mapper 3: More placemarks, advanced customization, and more

Do you have a spreadsheet of locations that you’d like to see on a map? Here on the Google Earth Outreach team we talk to many nonprofits who use Google Earth and Maps to tell their stories and visualize their data. Often the data is in spreadsheets, or other tabular formats. Converting these rows and columns into a map brings the spreadsheet to life by providing geographic context and a new way to visualize the information.

Spreadsheet Mapper is a tool that enables anyone to easily create a well-designed KML file to show off their data in Google Earth and Maps. Since Spreadsheet Mapper is a Google Docs template, you fill in your data using the familiar interface of a spreadsheet, and create a great KML without any coding. It gives you all the cloud-based benefits of Google Docs, including collaborative editing and the ability to publish directly to the web.

When we released Spreadsheet Mapper 2 a few years ago, it had a number of limitations, especially with regard to the number of placemarks it could create and the available balloon templates. In response to user feedback, and taking advantage of new features in Google spreadsheets and Google Apps Scripts, we have upgraded Spreadsheet Mapper with a variety of new and improved features:

• More placemarks: Support for 1,000 placemarks and ability to add more as needed
• Flexible balloon design: Take advantage of even more balloon design templates and simplified starter templates
• Simplified publication: Just click “Publish to the web” to share your map (no more fussing with URLs)
• New customization options: Advanced users can change the default view and network link details

Ready to try it? The Spreadsheet Mapper v3 tutorial will get you started.

We hope these new tools make mapping from spreadsheet data easier than ever!

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Developer Advocate with the Google Earth Outreach team

Balloon and kite imagery in Google Earth

Here at Google we publish a lot of imagery, most of which comes from the satellite and aerial imagery providers with whom we partner. Last week we published something a bit different: images collected from balloons and kites! The resolution is amazing, and it’s something that just about anyone can do themselves.

Public Laboratory image of Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA (July 2011) in Google Earth
Our friends at The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science have been working hard to make imagery collection easy, cheap and accessible. Their grassroots mapping work is based on the idea that citizens anywhere should be able to explore the environment in and around their communities, by collecting their own imagery and other data, and to do it in a way that is useful for scientific and social purposes.

The Public Laboratory has developed an open source balloon mapping toolkit that allows anyone with an inexpensive digital point and shoot camera, and about $100 of other parts (balloon, helium, line, soda bottle, etc.) to take photos of the ground around them. They also provide a web-based tool called MapKnitter for aligning the photos into a georeferenced image that can be used in Google Earth and other digital mapping tools.

Public Laboratory image of WhereCamp, Stanford University (April 2011) in Google Earth
We’ve imported many of the images from the Public Laboratory’s archives into Google Earth’s historical imagery database. To help you find them, download this KML file, open it in Google Earth (make sure you’re using the latest version), and fly to the image locations in space and time. Have fun exploring this unique imagery!

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Developer Advocate with the Google Earth Outreach team

Why maps matter: Using digital cartography tools to change the world

People have created maps since early civilization, but only recently have digital mapping tools like Google Earth and Maps made it easy to build sophisticated and interactive maps that can be disseminated to hundreds of millions of people online. Non-profits have taken advantage of these tools to create maps that matter, and that are truly initiating change around the world. That’s why my team, Google Earth Outreach, exists: to help public benefit organizations use Google’s mapping tools for good.


Find out how non-profits are changing the world with maps.
There’s no better inspiration for creating your own map than the stories of accomplishment from organizations like the ones featured in the video above. We invite you to check out the new Success Stories section of the Google Earth Outreach website. Along with a completely new look and feel, our website now allows you to learn all about a variety of organizations that are using maps for good.

Get started by reading about how the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation partnered with Google to collect Street View imagery for the Amazon. It’s now possible to virtually float down the Rio Negro and its tributaries, see ground-level images of riverside communities, and trek down a trail into the Amazon rainforest, all without leaving the comfort of home. You’ll also learn about Architecture for Humanity, an organization using Google SketchUp to design architectural solutions for communities in need.

Collecting Street View imagery in the Amazon
Once you’ve read through the stories and have an idea of what you might like to create, you can browse through our tutorials or request a software grant for our enterprise-level products like Google Earth Pro. Or, if you’re interested in an overview of all the tools available to you from Google, feel free to check out our Explore Tools page, where you’ll find information about the many Google mapping tools (both free and Pro) that are available to non-profits.

If you’re looking for additional training beyond the tutorials, check out our new Events page, where you can see where Google Earth Outreach will be next and where we’ve been in the past, including rich resources from past workshops.

If you want to change the world, we hope these new tools help. Happy mapping!

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach

Visit the Amazon on World Forest Day with Street View

(Cross Posted on Official Google Blog)

Last August, a few members of our Brazil and U.S. Street View and Google Earth Outreach teams were invited to the Amazon Basin to collect ground-level images of the rivers, forest and communities in the Rio Negro Reserve. Today, on World Forest Day, we’re making those images available through the Street View feature on Google Maps. Now anyone can experience the beauty and diversity of the Amazon.

Tributary of the Rio Negro - View Larger Map

Take a virtual boat ride down the main section of the Rio Negro, and float up into the smaller tributaries where the forest is flooded. Stroll along the paths of Tumbira, the largest community in the Reserve, or visit some of the other communities who invited us to share their lives and cultures. Enjoy a hike along an Amazon forest trail and see where Brazil nuts are harvested. You can even see a forest critter if you look hard enough!

Amazon Rainforest - View Larger Map

This project was made possible in partnership with the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), the local nonprofit conservation organization that invited us to the area. We used the Street View trike and a tripod camera with a fisheye lens—typically used to capture imagery of business interiors—to capture both the natural landscape and the local communities. In all, more than 50,000 still photos were stitched together to create these immersive, 360-degree panoramic views:

Many areas of the Amazon, including Rio Negro Reserve, are under the protection of the Brazilian government with restricted access to the public, so we hope that this Street View collection provides access to this special corner of the planet that many of us otherwise wouldn’t have the chance to experience. Together with FAS, we’re thrilled to help everyone from researchers and scientists to armchair explorers around the world learn more about the Amazon, and better understand how local communities there are working to preserve this unique environment for future generations.

To do this directly from maps you can go to Brazil map and drag Pegman to the Rio Negro River

Start exploring this portion of the Amazon and other collections around the world on the updated Street View site and gallery.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Project Lead for Google Street View in the Amazon

Protecting the world’s coral reefs through mapping

Editors Note: Today’s guest author is Katie Reytar, a Research Associate for the World Resources Institute. WRI was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to help them share and visualize the results of years of research about the state of the world’s reefs.

Since 1998, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has been using GIS (Geographic Information System) models to develop map-based assessments of threats to the world’s coral reefs. Reefs at Risk Revisited, released in February 2011, is the latest assessment in the series and is based on a nearly three-year study that produced the most highly-detailed global maps of coral reef threats to date. The study analyzed and mapped threats to coral reefs from local human activities such as coastal development, unsustainable fishing, and marine and land-based pollution, as well as climate-related threats caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

While the Reefs at Risk Revisited report, maps and data sets are the core components of our work, we found ourselves still searching for a compelling way to convey our findings on these dynamic yet fragile reef ecosystems. We also wanted to generate greater awareness of the unique characteristics of reef habitats across different geographies and the irreplaceable cultural and life-sustaining services that reefs provide to people all over the world. All of these elements are best communicated when you can see them for yourself, which is why we created a virtual tour of these reefs around the world with our Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant.

Watch a virtual tour of the most at-risk reefs in the world courtesy of the World Resources Institute.

In the tour, the Reefs at Risk Revisited maps come alive on Google Earth with photos and underwater video from each of the major coral reef regions of the world: the Caribbean, Middle East, Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Pacific, as well as a global-level introduction and conclusion. The journey to each region provides a brief overview of the biodiversity of reef ecosystems, their importance to people and local economies, and the types and magnitudes of threats that reefs face, illustrated with footage of both healthy and damaged reefs.

You’ll also experience first hand these fantastically dynamic and productive ecosystems that extend across about 250,000 sq km (96,500 sq miles) of the tropical ocean. Even though this area represents less than 0.1% of the global ocean, reefs are home to as many as 25% of all known marine species. In the tropics, coral reefs are not only a critical habitat for marine species, but they also play an essential role in the lives of millions of people who live near them: they provide food and income from fisheries, revenue from tourism, and protection for coastal communities from storm surges.

Among the other products of the Reefs at Risk Revisited project are global maps of coral reefs rated according to level of threat in the present, 2030, and 2050. These maps are available as downloadable KML files on the WRI website for viewing on Google Earth, and also as part of an online map developed using Google Fusion Tables. With these interactive maps you can zoom in to your favorite reef to explore it more closely in your own self-guided tour.

Explore Reefs at Risk Revisited in Google Earth.

We hope that you enjoy our tour and maps, and that you are able to visit a coral reef to learn more about these important and unique ecosystems. With improved understanding, we can manage and protect these resources so that we can all enjoy them and benefit from them for generations to come.

Posted by Katie Reytar, Research Associate at the World Resources Institute

Follow in Darwin's footsteps with the iNaturalist mobile app

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Dr. Scott Loarie, a fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford and co-director of iNaturalist.org, a biodiversity citizen-science website. Pepperwood Preserve was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to share how the iNaturalist Android application developed as a result of this grant is being used in action at Pepperwood Preserve.

Last weekend, as I rolled back a piece of bark at Pepperwood Preserve to reveal a big black beetle, I was reminded of a great story about Charles Darwin. Out collecting beetles, Darwin already had a beetle in each hand when he spotted a third. To free up a hand, he popped one of the beetles in his mouth. No sooner had he done this when it excreted some sort of burning liquid onto his tongue forcing him to spit it out, drop the second, and miss his chance for the third.

Now in 2012, all I had to do was point my phone at the beetle and snap its picture with the iNaturalist app (available on iOS and Android). Beetle mishaps aside, following in Darwin's footsteps wasn't really something non-scientists could participate in until recently. Specimens had to be collected, stuffed and shipped to museums where they were identified, labeled and catalogued. But with new technologies like Google Maps and smartphones, contributing data to museums now only takes a single click.

Pepperwood Research Specialist Morgan Kennedy demonstrates how to use the iNaturalist app to observe a native grass at Pepperwood Preserve.

Last Saturday, Morgan Kennedy introduced the Pepperwood Vital Signs project on iNaturalist.org, a citizen-science website I help direct, to a group of about 20 community members at Pepperwood Preserve. The project aims to map the distribution of plants and animals across the preserve with geo-referenced photos contributed by community members. The community members participating in the project often don't know the name of the species they are photographing, but by passing the contributions on to international museum consortiums and conservation organizations, iNaturalist photos are usually identified by scientists and experts within a few days.

Over the last year, community members have documented more than 400 distinct species by uploading more than 900 geo-referenced photos from Pepperwood. As the pilot preserve participating in the new Bay Area Open Space Council BioAtlas initiative, Pepperwood is developing ways to use iNaturalist to assemble the contributed data into digital education materials that can be used by the preserves to further engage and educate their community members.

This Google Map shows the Pepperwood Boundaries and more than 900 contributions to the Pepperwood Vital Signs project on iNaturalist.org.

Saturday's training was especially exciting because Morgan demoed the new Android App that iNaturalist developed with the support of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant to Pepperwood. By making the contribution of data to museums easy and fun, the Android app clears a major barrier towards recruiting non-scientists to participate.

These reinforcements couldn't have arrived sooner. Plants and animals are disappearing about 1,000 times faster than normal with ongoing climate and land-use change, and one of the most difficult hurdles towards addressing these challenges has been the basic scarcity of information about where plants and animals persist and where they do not. Without the help of non-scientists, the handfuls of museums and graduate students tasked with providing this information simply can't scale to meet these challenges.

Want to get involved? Download the app (on iOS or Android), get outdoors, and start documenting nature from wherever you are in the world! If you want to start your own regional project, like the Pepperwood Vital Signs project, you can do that here. You'll be following in Darwin's footsteps - just don't be tempted to put any beetles in your mouth!

Posted by Scott Loarie, co-director iNaturalist.org

Lay claim to your personal conservation plot with Adopt-an-Acre

One of my favorite quotes is by American anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

We can each play an active role in changing the world for the better by preserving areas we care about. The Nature Conservancy has just made it easier with their Adopt-an-Acre program. They’ve updated their mapping tool today as the result of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, which offers funding to organizations that create clever, cutting-edge applications using Google mapping technologies.

One of the solutions for widespread habitat loss is to acquire large plots of land for conservation. Since 1991, the Adopt-an-Acre program has protected more than 600,000 acres spanning from North America to Africa and Australia, even protecting offshore areas critical for delicate coral reefs and humpback breeding grounds.

Adopt an acre through the Nature Conservancy
There are two featured areas that allow you to adopt a specific acre, the Nash Prairie Preserve in Texas and the Warm Springs Mountain Preserve in Virginia. Simply fly to ground level on the embedded Google Map and choose your acre. You can also select your plot through Google Earth by clicking on the “View in Google Earth” link. This map enables any interested individual to make a pledge and help restore an acre of land to its pristine state.

The Nash Prairie Preserve in Texas is a beautiful and vital tall prairie grassland. These prairies used to cover wide expanses in the Bottomlands region of coastal Texas, but these areas have been reduced due to metropolitan encroachment. More than 120 bird species and 300 plant species thrive in this disappearing ecosystem, which you can help protect.

The Warm Springs Mountain Preserve in Virginia is the other area within a 77,000 acre wildlife corridor where you can adopt a specific acre. If you have a connection to the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia, or if you are passionate about preserving species like the interior dwelling songbird, you can choose from a variety of landscapes, pristine rivers and mountain forests to conserve.

Best of all, you can adopt an acre in the name of a loved one or as a gift to someone else. Their name will appear on the map alongside others who have entered their names in support of preserving our wild America.

Learn more about what nonprofits have done with mapping technologies on the Google Earth Outreach website.

Posted by Tanya Birch, Google Earth Outreach

Biodiversity on the move

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Ari Daniel Shapiro from Atlantic Public Media (APM), a non-profit public media organization in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. APM was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant, funded through the Google Inc. Charitable Giving Fund at the Tides Foundation. We’re excited to showcase how Atlantic Public Media has weaved Google Earth and KML tours into engaging stories about the diversity of life.

Life gets around. Tiny Arctic Terns soar from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and back, in a single year. A kind of sea algae known as “sea grapes” roam from Australia to the Mediterranean as stowaways, and then promptly conquer their new home.

As a radio producer, I’m used to telling these kinds of stories with audio, weaving together interview tape, ambient sound, and narration. For the last two years, I’ve worked with Atlantic Public Media and the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) to produce an audio series entitled One Species at a Time. Each episode pays homage to a different organism that gallops or creeps or pulses on our planet. We collaborate on these stories with Marie Studer, the EOL's Learning and Education Director, who has championed our podcast as way to make the natural world come alive and generate excitement amongst people who want to learn about it and explore.

While our podcast and public radio programming brought these tales of the natural world to listeners all over the planet, we always look for ways to tell these stories better and share them more widely. Eduardo Garcia Milagros, a biologist and KML developer in Spain, approached us last year with the idea to use Google Earth as a platform for these mini-documentaries. Brimming with enthusiasm, he shared “When I first opened Google Earth, I went to see my hometown. Once I started exploring KML capabilities, I realized that Google Earth can be an amazing educational tool, especially when you have a good story.” Inspired by his excitement, we decided to identify species whose stories could really be best illustrated through a map, such as the Arctic Tern’s annual migration.

Our tour on Arctic terns can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded and explored in Google Earth.

Incorporating Google Earth into our narratives proved to be an interesting challenge for me and Jay Allison, my editor on the project and the Executive Director of APM. We wanted to make the most of the map as a medium to bring to life the tale of the Arctic Tern and other species for viewers. By integrating geographic animation and imagery from all over the world with the audio and images from contributing scientists, we were able to support and enhance the story. For example, in the sea algae tour below, we circle the globe to the Amazon rainforest to illustrate a phenomenon in the ecology of the Mediterranean.

Our sea algae tour can also be found on YouTube or downloaded for viewing in Google Earth.

These tours combine voice, sound, images, video, and data-driven animations to explain how two creatures have been able to travel so much of our planet. Coming from a public radio documentary background, we tend to approach things from a purely narrative or poetic angle, but Google Earth tours allow for audio/visual dialogue as well. The movement isn't purely in the story. The map can become part of a “conversation,” and we're just beginning to explore the possibilities.

We hope to produce more of these Biodiversity on the Move tours in the future; we’d like to hear what you think of them and what we can improve next time. Drop us a line on the Encyclopedia of Life blog.

Posted by Ari Daniel Shapiro, Atlantic Public Media and the Encyclopedia of Life