Announcing the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants Program

(Cross-posted from the Official Google.org Blog)

Over the years, the Google Earth Outreach team has seen hundreds of maps that nonprofits are using to change the world for the better. We’ve also talked to just as many nonprofits who have a great idea for a map they want to create, but don’t have people on their team with enough technical skills to create it.

Today, we’re excited to announce the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants program, supporting selected projects from eligible nonprofit organizations that are using Google’s mapping technologies in novel, innovative ways to make the world a better place.

Through this program, non-profit organizations from all over the world will have an opportunity to receive up to $20,000 that will help turn their mapping ideas to support their causes into a reality. Numerous nonprofits have already used Google Earth to raise awareness about an issue or cause that demonstrate innovation and creativity. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and partners created the Crisis in Darfur Google Earth layer, which utilized Google Earth’s high-resolution satellite imagery to document the burning of villages, destruction of communities and livelihoods as a result of the genocide in Sudan. The presentation of refugee stories and testimonials in a map visualization brought 26 times the usual number of visitors to the USHMM’s “How Can I Help?” section of the website.

Charity:Water uses the Google Maps API to show donors precisely where the money they contributed was allocated. After donating, donors receive geographic coordinates to view the location of a well to which they’ve contributed, and they can also view pictures of people accessing clean drinking water as a result of their contribution.

Charity:Water connects donors to well sites all over the globe.

Applications to the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants program will be accepted until May 26, 2011. More details of the program, project requirements and eligibility can be found on the Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants page. Apply today!

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Team

Celebrating Arbor Day with Save the Redwoods League and Google Earth

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

From time to time we invite guests to post about topics of interest and we’re pleased to have Emily Limm join us for U.S. Arbor Day. Emily is the science director for the non-profit Save the Redwoods League and is studying the impact of climate change on the redwood forests of northern California. To raise awareness about the League’s research, she worked with Google Earth Outreach to model old-growth redwoods on Google Earth. In this post, Emily shares her ideas on how technology and citizen science can help scientific research. -Ed.

Today is U.S. Arbor Day, a holiday established 120 years ago to celebrate our often under-appreciated forests, which provide us with necessities like clean air and drinking water as well as small pleasures like shade for a summer’s day picnic or a beautiful place to hike with crunchy leaves underfoot. Arbor Day holds special meaning for me because I spend most of my time in the coastal redwood forests of California, working to protect the world’s tallest tree species.

Over the past few months, Save the Redwoods League and the Google Earth Outreach team have collaborated to create 3D models of the old-growth redwood forest in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in northern California, so you can now take a virtual hike among the ancient trees and cruise over towering treetops. Explore the park by activating the 3D trees layer in Earth (under 3D Buildings) and searching for [jedediah smith redwoods state park, ca]. Tilt your view angle toward the horizon to make the trees appear. You can download the KML file for the narrated tour about redwoods to view in Google Earth, or watch the video version below:



In order to protect redwoods in Jedediah Smith and elsewhere, my colleagues and I are working to collect data on geographic regions where the trees are currently thriving to determine how future forests will fare in our changing climate. A critical piece of our work is collecting and comparing field observations of redwoods across different climates, but we need more data to draw strong conclusions—and that’s where you come in.

Today, Save the Redwoods League is launching our citizen science project Redwood Watch, powered by iNaturalist.org, a platform for recording, organizing and mapping nature observations. By sharing a simple digital photograph of a redwood tree and the time and location where the picture was taken, you can help the League track and monitor the species. If you know of a redwood tree—perhaps in your own backyard or in a nearby park—you can use the free Redwood Watch iPhone application or your own camera to take a photo, add a comment and submit it online. iNaturalist stores your observation and, if geographical coordinates weren’t captured automatically, uses the Google Maps APIs to assign them to your photo. With your geolocated observation, we can zoom out and analyze your observation in the context of global environmental and climatic patterns.

An observation of a coast redwood submitted to the Redwood Watch on iNaturalist.org.

The more field observations Save the Redwoods League collects, the better we’ll understand what climate makes a healthy redwood today, and predict where the redwood forests of tomorrow will thrive. We hope to see you on the Redwood Watch.

Happy Arbor Day from Save the Redwoods League and Google Earth!

Note: There are plenty of parallel projects going on around the world, so if you don’t live near redwoods, consider participating in one of the other iNaturalist.org citizen science projects.

Posted by Emily Limm, Ph.D., Director of Science and Planning, Save the Redwoods League

Celebrating Earth Day

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Today, we’re celebrating Earth Day with an animated, interactive doodle on our homepage and events at Google offices around the world. At our headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., we’re holding an environmental fair for Googlers, complete with speakers and contests to strengthen Googlers’ green acumen, and a cookout using—what else—parabolic solar cookers (don’t worry, we’ll compost the leftovers).

Our campus garden in Mountain View

We’ve been carbon neutral since 2007 and—Earth Day or not—we’re always asking ourselves what we can do to make the world greener today than it was yesterday. This week, we launched a new website with many of the questions we’ve been asking over the years that have inspired our environmental initiatives. What can we do to make renewable energy cheaper than coal? How can we run a data center using 50 percent less energy? And what does it take to green our energy supply?

It’s questions like these that led us to install solar panels on our Mountain View campus in 2007—at the time, the largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. They’re also what made us decide to donate to Googlers’ favorite charities based on how often they self-power their commute, whether by bike or by pogo stick. We hope the new website helps you start asking bold questions that lead to innovative solutions to make the world a greener place.

In addition to our new site, we’ve had a busy few weeks continuing our green streak. We doubled down on greening our energy supply with our second power purchase agreement (PPA) in less than a year and made several new investments: at a solar photovoltaic plant in Germany (our first in Europe), and others in the largest wind farm and solar project in the world, bringing our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million. While the investments won’t supply our operations with energy, we believe they make business sense and will spur development and deployment of compelling clean energy technologies.

This Earth Day, we’ll continue to ask ourselves what else we can do to bring us closer to true sustainability. We hope that you, and companies across the world, will be doing the same.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Enegy Czar

Mission Blue: Return to the Gulf of Mexico

With support from Google, the Waitt Foundation, Hope Spots LLC and the National Geographic Society, Sylvia Earle and Mission Blue are embarking on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico that will take a deep look at how the region is recovering from the five million gallons of oil spilled from the BP Deep Horizon Oil Spill last year. Follow along with the expedition by checking back daily and clicking on the blue ship icon in Google Earth located off of the US coast near Pensacola, Florida, where the expedition begins (make sure the Places layer is turned on). The science team will share updates and media from the expedition, including photographs, videos and links to Google maps on the National Geographic News Watch blog here.

Click on the blue ship icon near Pensacola, Florida in Google Earth
to see the most recent post from the expedition.

"Our goal is to identify areas with potential for Gulf ecosystem recovery," said Dr. Earle, founder of SEAlliance and recipient of the 2009 TED Prize that developed into Mission Blue, an international ocean conservation movement. "That is going to require protection of places healthy enough to replenish and rebuild populations. What’s happened here is far from over for the clams and oysters and other sea life critical to a healthy Gulf of Mexico."

The fate and impact of the spilled oil, gas and dispersants applied following the blowout into the Gulf are the subject of intense discussion by experts. The expedition team, assembled under the broad banner of the Mission Blue initiative, seeks answers to questions about the current status of key species and ecosystems.

Other research participants include: Dr. Thomas Shirley, Larry McKinney, Douglas Weaver and Harriet Nash from the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi; Edith Widder and Brandy Nelson, Ocean Research & Conservation Association and Carl Safina, Blue Ocean Institute. Research dives are planned using a Dual Deepworker submersible made available to the expedition by the Waitt Institute.

You can also experience the expedition for yourself by downloading this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Posted by Jenifer Foulkes, Product Manager, Ocean in Google Earth and Maps

Learn about the human side of climate change with Kofi Annan

[Cross-posted on the Google.org and Official Google Blog]

Climate change is too often misunderstood to be simply an environmental issue, rather than a human issue. For our children and grandchildren, climate change is an issue of public health, economics, global security and social equity. This human side of climate change is explained in a new Google Earth tour narrated by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Within these stories, you’ll find data and tools to explore this topic in more depth, and meet some of the people who are actively working on managing the risks of climate variability and change. We encourage you to take the tour to learn more about these human issues and the inspiring work of groups like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) that are helping farmers cope with climate change. We hope this video will serve as a useful tool as educators help students around the world understand the complexity of this issue.



This is the latest in our series of climate change tours that we’re releasing leading up to the global U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP16) talks in Cancun, Mexico this week.

As part of the Google Earth for Educators Community, we’ve also created a special Climate Change Educators Resources page that teachers can use in their classrooms. Here, teachers can find the tools they need to create lesson plans about climate change, including all the individual Google Earth KML layers available for download. Teachers and students can overlay multiple data layers that help illustrate climate change, and discuss and analyze them as part of K-12 and higher education curriculum. We’re also looking for lessons plans for any school grade that use this narrated tour or these Google Earth KML layers, so if you’re a teacher or instructor, please submit your lesson plan for review now.

Visit google.com/landing/cop16/climatetours.html or the Climate Change Educators Resources page to learn more about climate change today.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org

Defending the rivers of the Amazon

From time to time we invite guest posters to share their views on items relevant to the use of Google Earth. Here we have a post from Google Earth Outreach grantees Amazon Watch and International Rivers, two U.S.-based organizations that support Brazil’s Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre. Amazon Watch and International Rivers have used Google Earth to animate what could happen if the Belo Monte Dam Complex were built on the Xingu River in the Amazon. We’ve offered them some space to share their work and thoughts with our readers.

Please note: This is a complicated issue with many facets, and the views of this poster do not necessarily represent the official viewpoint of Google Inc.; we support the use of Google Earth for visualizations to create dialog.


Today, Amazon Watch and International Rivers are releasing a new Google Earth tour and YouTube video called “Defending the Rivers of the Amazon," narrated by Sigourney Weaver, to draw attention to the impacts of the proposed Belo Monte Dam Complex on the people and ecology of the Xingu River.

If built, Belo Monte would be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric dam, and would divert the flow of the Xingu River, a massive tributary of the Amazon. It would flood the rainforest, displace more than 20,000 people, and generate greenhouse gases. On August 26th, the Brazilian government signed the concession to build despite protests by the region’s indigenous and local populations.



Download the “Defending the Rivers of the Amazon” Google Earth tour

The idea for the Google Earth tour emerged when “Avatar” director James Cameron and cast member Sigourney Weaver traveled to the Xingu River in April with Amazon Watch and the Brazilian Instituto Socioambiental (ISA). The launch of this Belo Monte Dam 3D animation is timed with the re-release of Avatar in theatres. James Cameron has also produced an informational video on Belo Monte called “A Message from Pandora” to highlight one of many real Pandoras on Earth.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom; the animation uses map overlays and 3D models to illustrate the potential for solar and wind energy as an alternative solution to meet Brazil’s future energy needs, using data from studies performed in the country.

But don’t take our word for it; watch the video, interact with the tour, and see for yourself. Then follow the link to take action. The people of the Xingu will thank you for it.

Posted by Atossa Soltani, Executive Director, Amazon Watch and Aviva Imhof, Campaigns Director, International Rivers

Heroic Defenders of Wildlife organization maps oil spill cleanup efforts

Update: please visit the Conservation Registry for an updated map of the Gulf Oil Spill relief efforts.

For a period of several months, 50,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day flowed from the site of the Deepwater Horizon well straight into the Gulf of Mexico. After the initial explosion on April 20th, the first reports of oil sightings on the coastlines began on June 1st. People living and working along the shoreline spanning Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida saw clumps of crude oil on their local beaches. That was followed by reports of birds, dolphins, fish and sea turtles covered in slick black oil.

In the aftermath of the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, environmental groups across the country have been rallying in support of both immediate coastal reparation and long-term solutions for the damage the Gulf Oil Spill has wreaked on the ecosystem. With those goals in mind, Washington, D.C.-based Defenders of Wildlife, an organization dedicated to protecting species and the habitats on which they depend, is doing everything it can to raise awareness and action for greater cleanup and conservation.

The organization is working to educate policymakers about the importance of protecting wildlife and securing a moratorium on further offshore drilling. In addition, Defenders of Wildlife has been issuing ongoing reports on the number of birds, sea turtles and marine mammals found covered in oil along the coast. As many as 400 different species of animals are projected to be impacted by the environmental nightmare. Since massive cleanup activities are being led by a number of environmental groups, Defenders of Wildlife also decided to use their powerful mapping platform called the Conservation Registry to track the collective efforts of all the various groups into one comprehensive map.

Oiled Wildlife Ticker, updated each day to track the numbers of animals that have been impacted by the spill

This Gulf Oil Spill Recovery map was created using the Google Maps API and the Google Earth API. It allows any users, whether they’re part of a non-profit group or concerned citizens who want to report what they observe in their backyards, to upload stories, photos and video to the common shared map. The result is an impressive illustration of all the projects - from beach cleanups to air monitoring surveys to sediment sampling - going on in the region to help rescue and restore affected species and their habitats. The map also shows numerous steps that the Obama Administration is taking to mitigate the near- and long-term impacts of the spill. As the map evolves, you’ll be able to see how the marine environment and coastlines recuperate from collaborative efforts by average people, non-profit organizations and government agencies.


Through this video, our most recent Google Earth Hero, Defenders of Wildlife, shares more about the creation of the Gulf Oil Spill Recovery application. Their hope is that it will not only help people visually understand the scope of the spill and recovery work, but also spur volunteers into taking action and getting involved themselves. Additional data contributed by Defenders of Wildlife, news and user videos can also be found on the Google Crisis Response oil spill recovery site.



Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Program Manager

Hope for Cousteau’s Ocean on World Oceans Day

Today is the second annual United Nations-designated World Oceans Day.

We celebrate this year by remembering the wonderful underwater films by Jacques Cousteau, as it would have been his 100th birthday on Friday. Take a tour of 10 locations from The Silent World and other film clips on our Ocean showcase following Captain Cousteau as he explored our connection to the Ocean World.

Take a highlight tour through 10 Cousteau film clips.

We as well have added the third Hope Spot tour with Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue foundation to the Ocean Showcase, where you can visit 5 more special places in the ocean in need of protection from the Chilean Fjords off South America, to the deep sea angler fish in the Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone, to the surfing hippos off the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa to the Outer Seychelles and Kermadec Trench north of New Zealand. You can now explore any of the Hope Spot posts in the Ocean layer in Google Earth by clicking on the yellow highlighted circle icons in the ocean.

See Hope Spot content highlighted with yellow circle icons in Google Earth. Click on the flame icon in the Gulf of Mexico to get more information on the Deep Horizon oil spill.

Celebrate the opportunities and challenges of our shared resource, the Ocean. See the cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion with new data, as that oil spill tragedy unfolds by clicking on the default on placemark southeast of New Orleans, USA.

Dive deeper on your own using Google Earth.

Posted by Jenifer Austin Foulkes, Product Manager

Children of the Amazon airs on PBS on Earth Day

In 2008, Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol joined the Google Earth Outreach team to train the Surui people of the Brazilian rainforest on Google tools to help preserve their way of life. One year later, in 2009, another team went back to the Amazon to teach the indigenous people how to use GPS-enabled mobile phones and mobile data collection tools, including Open Data Kit on the Android platform, to show the world where and when illegal logging is taking place within their protected territory. Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops -- One Year Later, documents the story.

Today, on the 40th anniversary of Earth Day 2010, Denise’s film, Children of the Amazon, will air on over 100 PBS stations nationwide, as well as on Link TV. Check your local listings for your PBS affiliate’s local screening.

Learn more about the film, view a trailer, watch a video about deforestation in Rondonia using Google Earth’s historical imagery and explore maps inspired by the film at www.childrenoftheamazon.com.

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Mapping new drinking water sources in Haiti

We have all heard how the earthquakes in Haiti have uprooted millions of people, with many of them displaced from their homes in Port-au-Prince to the rural areas.

charity:water is a non-profit organization working tirelessly to bring clean and safe drinking water to millions of people in developing nations. People to donate money towards a well or other water project, and charity:water tracks all water projects on their Google Maps-powered Projects page.

After a water project is installed, local field partners report back to charity:water with photos and GPS coordinates. charity:water then adds this project to their online map, so that donors can track the water projects to which they contributed, and the whole world can track all the water projects.

In the past few months, they have turned their attention to Haiti, and in honor of the recent World Water Day, they launched Unshaken, a new campaign to get support for new water projects in Haiti. So follow their map this year to see the support coming in for the Haiti rebuilding efforts!

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

Enjoy March while it’s still cold

The last day of March is typically the warmest day of the month. Today, scientists at Climate Central are launching a new interactive Google Map, which allows you to view areas of future freezing in the month of the March in the U.S.

The map shows high-resolution projections for future average March temperatures in the U.S. through the end of the century, focusing on where the average temperature is expected to be above or below freezing. You can use the time controls to scroll through the years, or click "play" to view an animation. You can also compare low vs. high carbon pollution scenarios.

While warm weather lovers may like the idea of warmer Marches, this would mean earlier snowmelt, which has been linked to drier rivers and forests later in the summer, and very much higher wildfire activity in the American West. We could also expect water shortages for farm irrigation and trouble for trout and other cold-water stream life. See how your area will fare by visiting the map now!

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

Dive into Google Earth with marine scientists

Have you ever dreamed of being a marine scientist? With today's release of a Google Earth tour by the Pew Environment Group to introduce the 2010 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation, you can put on your virtual scuba gear and join them in the underwater ecosystems, coral reefs, and shores around the world.

Narrated by actress and philanthropist Isabella Rossellini, the Google Earth tour introduces you to the work of the new Pew Marine Fellows: Daniel J. Conley, Omar Defeo, Beth Fulton, Peter Mumby, and Ben Sullivan.


The prestigious fellowship is awarded each year to five outstanding global leaders or teams for working tirelessly to preserve and protect the world’s oceans and marine species. For the next three years, these marine scientists will work on their original, research-based marine conservation project.


Each Pew Marine Fellow will communicate his or her results widely, so check back for more information about the program and the fellows at www.pewmarinefellows.org, or you can learn more about the fellows now by viewing the Google Earth tour on the 2010 Pew Marine Fellows website today!

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

Indigenous Mapping: A new Google technology workshop for tribal peoples

Indigenous people worldwide face special challenges in planning, policy and advocacy work. Issues such as cultural preservation, sovereignty, land use management, and handling mineral rights are just a few that they have to tackle. Recognizing this, we're happy to announce that Google and the Indigenous Mapping Network are teaming up to put on a two day workshop on the Google campus to teach people from native communities how to use Google's mapping technologies.

The mission of IMN has been to empower native communities by connecting them with the tools they need to protect, preserve, and enhance their way of life within their aboriginal territories. And they endeavor to bridge the gap between traditional "mapping" practices and modern mapping technologies.

On February 25th and 26th, 2010, Google and IMN will host a workshop on the Google campus for members and staff of indigenous groups who want to learn about Google geospatial and mobile technologies. This hands-on workshop will approach Google technologies with the special concerns of indigenous communities in mind, and will focus on the technical aspects of using Google Earth, Google Maps, Sketchup, Android mobile phones and Open Data Kit, among other technologies. Special attention will be given to:

• privacy and security of data
• mobile data collection
• data conversion from proprietary to open formats
• case studies blending geospatial technologies and traditional knowledge (see our previous posts: Tribe Teams with Google to make stand in Amazon, Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops)
• Google Earth as a new storytelling medium: how to create compelling narrative-driven visualizations

We are very excited to be hosting this event, and look forward to a long relationship with IMN. For more information and to register for this workshop, go to the IMN website.

Posted by Mano Marks, Geo Developer Advocate, and Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Exploring climate solutions: One tour at a time

As part of the lead-up to COP15, we have been releasing a series of Google Earth tours that illustrate climate change issues and solutions. Many of these include tours created by NGOs, which guide you through their efforts to tackle some of the impacts of our changing climate on human life, wildlife, and our environment.
Recently, we have added six new tours to the series, and they cross a wide breadth of issues, including climate change science, human health, renewable energy, wildlife migration and ocean conservation.

View them now at www.google.com/cop15.

• In Projecting Future Climate Change, Stephen Schneider, climate scientist and professor at Stanford University, introduces us to the factors that affect future climate change, how scientists make projections, and what we can do to prevent the worst impacts.

• In Climate & Health in Africa, the International Research Institute for Climate & Society (IRI) guides us through some of the work they are doing to project where meningitis may impact humans in the future under a changing climate, and illustrates their work with groups on the ground in Africa.

• In Harnessing Coal River Wind in Appalachia, the Coal River Wind Project describes a more renewable energy option -- wind farms -- in the Appalachian Mountains that they are fighting for as an alternative to mountaintop removal for coal mining.

• In Greenfreeze and SolarChill, Greenpeace describes Greenfreeze, a market-proven, revolutionary environmentally-friendly refrigeration technology that doesn't release greenhouse gases. The SolarChill project brings solar-powered fridges to Africa for food storage, and a refrigeration method that meets the WHO standards for vaccine storage.
  
  

• In Protecting the Arctic Ocean, Oceana guides you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduces you to the positive changes that have been made due to policies protecting certain parts of the Arctic from commercial fishing and other activities.
  
  
• In Saving North America's Wildlife in a Warmer World by Freedom to Roam, learn about wildlife corridors for some of the continent's flagship species to enable them to migrate north and to higher altitudes as the globe warms.

Get started now - go to www.google.com/cop15 and pick a tour.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Wild about Africa

[We invited March Turnbull from the MAPA Project to write a guest post and describe the work they've done to create a detailed map of Africa's protected areas -- Ed.]

The greatest wildlife show on earth is about to arrive on your PC.

Africa is the last continent on earth to hold on to its ‘megafauna’ – the really big stuff like elephants, rhinos and herds of antelope tens thousands strong - and it’s hanging on to them by the skin on its teeth.

Here at the MAPA Project, we’re making sure that no one can say “We never knew!” when it comes to keeping African parks and wildlife in the public eye.

MAPA stands for ‘Mapping Africa’s Protected Areas’ and so far we’ve plotted the major parks, reserves, and protected areas for Southern and East Africa. Check them out on Google Earth and watch epic wildlife video snippets or just find out about places you didn’t even know existed. Download the MAPA layer and find out just how extraordinary our continent is. You can also find the layer in the Google Earth Outreach Showcase.

What’s the largest mammal migration on earth? You’d probably guess the wildebeest migration in East Africa with over a million wildebeest and zebra on the move every year. Well, it may be the heaviest one, but what about the two million fruit bats which gather in Kasanka National Park in Zambia every November and fly off every evening, darkening the sky for twenty minutes? Nobody knows why they all go there, but go they do – and you can too.

It’s a work-in-progress and we have thousands more parks, blog posts, research projects and icons to get up but we are really on our way now. We plan to be at it for another couple of years but if you need to know anything about conservation in Africa, start here and you will end up in the right place.

Conservationists and GIS enthusiasts all across Africa are helping us to pull this groundbreaking project together. You can too: each park and reserve on the map tells its story and each links to websites with even more info. Bloggers are welcome on the layer and over fifty are already keeping us posted with what they are doing for conservation.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those tracks that researchers download from satellite collars on the National Geographic channel? Well we did too, so we’re looking for them and we’ve already put a couple online for you to unravel, with plenty more to come.

So, if you are considering traveling in Africa, if you need some really credible background to that news story or school project, or if you just know the value of something that is irreplaceable, load this layer and watch what Africa is doing to conserve its priceless environmental legacy. For more information on how to get involved, visit www.mapaproject.org.

Posted by March Turnbull, Mapping Africa's Protected Areas

A picture is worth millions of voices

Every year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) gives assistance and shelter to millions of people forcibly uprooted from their homes. Some of them have lived in camps or ghettos for up to 20 years. The upcoming World Refugee Day on 20th June is an important opportunity for everybody to show solidarity.

Marie is a Burundian refugee in Rwanda. As a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, she and her family were attacked by Hutu rebels on several occasions. Now she and her family are waiting to be resettled; as she says, "I plan to work and start over my life with my family. It’s the most precious dream I have… to see them again."

Together with Google, UNHCR is putting refugees on the map - a virtual map - with a new Google Earth tour that shows UNHCR's refugee camps across the globe. Claudia Gonzalez-Gisiger from UNHCR says the tour is a powerful way for everyone to get an insight into the desperate conditions in which refugees live.

The Google Earth tour, set to the Rolling Stone's classic track Gimme Shelter, kindly donated to UNHCR by ABCKO as part of the organization's flagship Gimme Shelter Campaign, gives a human face to refugees from seven different camps across Asia and Africa, allowing you a small insight into the lives of refugees like Marie. Documenting and mapping refugees can help focus public attention on human rights issues worldwide, and hopefully provide a voice for persecuted children, women and men.

Posted by By Hannah Freya Anderson, UNHCR; and France Lamy, Google.org

Earth Outreach Gets a Makeover

You want to change the world. We want to help.

With our newly re-designed website, Google Earth Outreach can help more than ever. Our new showcase, tutorials, and community give non-profit and public benefit organizations the ability to explore, create, and connect at Google Earth Outreach.

Explore non-profit and public benefit maps with our new Showcase, where you can interact with Google Earth and Maps projects right from within the webpage. We've added Maps API and Earth API applications, as well as My Maps. You can also visit in-depth case studies for several projects from the Showcase. Some case studies, like Appalachian Voices and Clean Up the World, contain new videos about how the organization used maps to change the world.


Create maps with our enhanced Tutorials section, which includes seven new Google Earth tutorials, such as how to create a tour and embed it on your website. All of the new tutorials have videos to watch before you get started. You can also plan your project before you dive into your mapping work. Also new is a list of Tools and Resources that will help you create your maps.



Connect with other non-profits at our new Community & Grants section, which contains many different opportunities for non-profits. If you're an eligible non-profit, you can apply for Google Maps & Earth software grants, including Google Earth Pro, SketchUp Pro, and now Maps API Premier. In our new Developer Marketplace , you can find a list of programmers and developers with experience in public benefit mapping to help with your project. Finally, you can sign up for our quarterly newsletter where you can learn about new updates, upcoming trainings, and more!

Visit our new Earth Outreach website today at http://earth.google.com/outreach.

Posted by Tanya Keen and Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach

New resources for non-profit and humanitarian mapping

Our friends at MapAction have created a great new publication. Their Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping was produced "to help humanitarian organisations to make use of mapping methods using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related technologies". You can download the first edition for free (3.2MB PDF).

While the free field guide is designed to help organizations doing emergency work, it is relevant to many other organizations, and anyone looking to take advantage of geospatial tools and methods like GPS technologies for collecting data, free & open-source GIS software such as MapWindow for processing and analyzing data, and Google Earth and Google Maps for visualization and display.  

Early last year, MapAction published a briefing paper (1MB PDF) on the use of Google Earth in the humanitarian sector.  Since then, we've added several new features, like imagery acquisition dates and historical imagery, touring, ocean, and free GPS data import, all of which help users to visualize, share and explore their places and data in new and exciting ways.  

Another great new resource is A Nonprofit's Introduction to Google's Online Mapping Tools, recently posted on TechSoup by Chris Peters and Mano Marks.  It provides excellent advice on how organizations that have data to display can effectively use Google Maps and Google Earth for outreach and advocacy.  

Some more handy Google Earth and Google Maps resources include: 

• Google Earth Outreach (website with examples and tutorials)
• Maps 2.0 Resources from Humaninet 
• A Rough Google Earth Guide (872kB PDF) form Mercy Corps

Finally, Google has a full suite of free tools available to non-profits on the Google for Non-Profits page.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Earth Outreach

Happy Earth Day from Google Earth

It probably comes as no surprise that the Google Earth team gets very excited about Earth Day. Today we're celebrating Earth Day by featuring a special collection of KMLs in our Gallery to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment -- it's a present to the Earth and also to you!

Our blue planet is an exceptionally complex ecosystem with a sophisticated tapestry of millions of sub-ecosystems and living creatures. Sometimes it becomes easy to overlook the impact of our action to this intricate yet fragile ecosystem. Why not mark Earth Day by using Google Earth to explore featured KMLs in our Gallery, which provide rich geospatial presentation illustrating interesting changes in our environment? For example, discover changes in glaciers over the years, rising sea levels and climatic change and rising temperature from the featured KMLs in our Gallery. 

With annotated data on top of Google Earth, these KMLs provides insight into the way humans are interacting with ecosystems around the world. Do you know that how much overfishing has occurred in the past? How does the equivalent of 1.5 million elephants of fisheries catches in the water of Alaska sound to you? You can learn more from this KML. Our collection also features information about the worst oil spill disaster in the history and air pollution in UK -- some good food for thought as you reflect on Earth Day.

However, progress has been made and several organizations have always stayed at forefront to help conserve the environement: NDBC, NOAA, WWF, EarthWatch, and a lot of other organizations are the real unsung heroes behind the global effort to reverse the vicious trends. Groups like these inspire us to do better to conserve the the planet everyday. Google is committed to environmental initiatives of our own, and we salute all of those who are doing inspiring things to help make the Earth a better place not just once a year, but every day.

Posted by Krating Poonpol, Product Marketing Manager

Armchair travel with environmental heroes

The Goldman Environmental Prize is the world’s largest prize for grassroots environmentalists. Informally known as the “Green Nobel,” the Goldman is awarded to six environmental heroes each year – one from each inhabited continent – with a cash prize of $150,000.

For 2009 - the prize's 20th anniversary - Goldman has used Google Earth to illustrate the environmental issues being addressed by this year’s winners. The Goldman Prize layer and tour narrated by Robert Redford, available on the Goldman Prize Web site and the Google Earth Outreach showcase include images, videos and information about the Prize winners.

The 2009 Goldman Prize winners, announced on April 19, include a mom from West Virginia who is taking on the U.S. coal industry, and a Bangladeshi lawyer who is cleaning up the perilous ship breaking industry. Learn about the 2009 winners on the Google Earth layer, and look for details on all 133 Goldman winners to become available in 2009.

Previous winners have been at the center of some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including seeking justice for victims of environmental disasters at Love Canal and Bhopal, India; leading the fight for dolphin-safe tuna and fighting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Since receiving a Goldman Prize, eight winners have been appointed or elected to national office in their countries. The 1991 Goldman Prize winner for Africa, Wangari Maathai, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach