Author(s):
Meg Stewart* - Vassar College
Mary Ann Cunningham - Vassar College
Kirsten Menking - Vassar College
Ken Bolton - Vassar College
Abstract:
Google Earth transformed the public's ability to visualize landscape features through imagery and is amplifying spatial literacy and geospatial awareness. Increasingly this program is serving as a platform for GIS data with more individual purposes. We have begun to use Google Earth to serve data to other users on campus, in order to facilitate communication about research projects, to support teaching, and to aid in community outreach. Beginning with a set of data for a collaborative stream monitoring project, we have used this approach to present our data to the public, as well as to provide cross-platform data access to participants of various projects. We have also used Google Earth with locally-produced data sets to support workshops and demonstrations in non-GIS classes and across disciplines. While this application is in early stages of development on campus, it has proven a useful tool for these communication purposes. The intuitive interface of Google Earth allows us to more quickly and easily produce maps and distribute them by way of the Google Earth community bulletin board than we can if we used an internet mapping service product or traditional GIS software. We present our progress here to show our methods, to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this approach to data distribution, and to help initiate exchanges of ideas on these kinds of directed applications of this software.
