Earth Online

Investigating Glacial Landforms with Google Earth

Michael Ritter — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 17:04:17 +0000

“Investigating Glacial Landforms with Google Earth” is a beta version of an assignment used in my totally online and hybrid introductory physical geography courses.

Investigation Glacial Landforms with Google Earth

Purpose: To apply a basic understanding of glacial process, and analytical tools for landform identification.

Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the exercise you should be able to:

Identify typical alpine and continental glacial landforms from aerial photographs and topographic maps.
Explain the origin of typical of glacial landforms through the use of analytical tools.

See: Investigating Glacial Landforms with Google Earth. Assignment submission forms are included. Comments appreaciated.

2010 in review

Michael Ritter — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:49:11 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 37,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 5 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 34 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 135kb.

The busiest day of the year was January 14th with 662 views. The most popular post that day was Google Earth Before and After images of Haiti Quake.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were google-latlong.blogspot.com, search.conduit.com, mritter.net, google.com, and google.co.in.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for google earth online, rss icon, earth online, online google earth, and google earth on line.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Google Earth Before and After images of Haiti Quake January 2010

USGS Multimedia Gallery RSS Feeds December 2009

Live Hurricane Hunter Missions in Google Earth July 2008
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Physical Geography Podcast January 2009
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Keeping track of the 2009 hurricane season with Google Earth June 2009

The Geoscience Channel

Michael Ritter — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 21:56:45 +0000

I’ve created a new blog called the Geoscience Channel devoted to sharing geoscience-related videos every Tuesday and Thursday. Find it at The Geoscience Channel on WordPress.

National Geographic Google Earth Grants Map

Michael Ritter — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 06:00:42 +0000

The National Geographic Society is well known for the research they have sponsored over the last 120 years. Over 9,000 grants to increase awareness and share geographic knowledge have been award by the Society. You can explore the grant projects with Google Earth. Clicking on a place mark pops up a description of the project. The Google Earth overlay presents the breadth of the Society’s work is visually striking way. A link on each project description gives you the opportunity to support the NGS.

For more see: National Geographic Google Earth Grants Map

USGS WaterAlert System

Michael Ritter — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:42:51 +0000

Cape May, N.J. gage station. Courtesy USGS.

The WaterAlert system from the USGS is useful new feature for professionals and public alike. Users can receive an e-mail or text message (hourly or daily) when selected parameters collected at USGS station exceed user-defined thresholds. Real-time data from the USGS gages is sent at various intervals, generally once every 1 to four hours to USGS offices. Notifications are based on the site dependent intervals for the data of interest.

Four data types can be subscribed and alerts sent for the following parameters depending on station:

Surface water: Discharge and Gage Height

Groundwater: Water Level, Below LSD (ft)

Water Quality: Temperature

Total Precipitation: 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 24 hours

For each data type, the following threshold conditions can be set:

Threshold conditions:

Greater than
Less than
Outside a range
Inside a range

The National Map from the USGS

Michael Ritter — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:27:32 +0000

The United States Geological Survey National Geospatial Program “provides leadership for USGS geospatial coordination, production and service activities.” The National Map is one of several initiatives administered by the program . The National Map puts orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover at the fingertips of users through its web viewer. The National Map is transitioning to a new method for delivering its products, making it ever more useful for professionals, teachers, students, and the general public. The new National Map Beta Viewer and Download platform recently made its debut. In addition to better product access, the new viewer lets you preview and download all National Map data and new US TOPO maps from one site. It will be interoperable with map viewers such as Google Maps, Bing!Maps, Google Earth using WMS, KML or ArcGIS. The viewer provides GIS tools to identify features, perform measurements and reverse geocode. For more information about features Introduction Letter Beta Information Sheet User Help/Support (QuickStart, FAQs, Contact Us). Useful tools like area measurement is provided free of charge, unlike the free version of Google Earth. The video below illustrates some of these features.

I encourage you to check out the new National Map beta viewer.

Google Earth Before and After images of Haiti Quake

Michael Ritter — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:27:05 +0000

Originally posted on The Physical Environment blog

The folks at Google LatLong blog have created a Google Earth layer with the most recent images of the devastation in Haiti. Below are before-and-after screenshots of the Presidential Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince:

Image source: Google LatLong blog

Go to the Google LatLong blog for more information and the Google Earth layer.

USGS Multimedia Gallery RSS Feeds

Michael Ritter — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 15:39:15 +0000

RSS feeds are a way for content providers to send web site updates to users. Users can subscribe via a newsreader or, as I do, add them to a personal web portal page like iGoogle. The user’s feed reader is updated with the latest information as new material is added by the content provider. The USGS uses a variety of social media and RSS to push out late-breaking news, research notes, and a host of other information. Their Multimedia Gallery (http://gallery.usgs.gov/) feeds are particularly useful for teachers looking for materials to use in their courses. The gallery RSS feed alerts subscribers to new media as its added to their collections. Collections currently include:

Geology
DOI Recovery
Animal
Natural Hazards
Water
Biology
Climate Change
USGS Museum
Natural and Man-made Structures
Astrogeology
Native American and Tribal Activities
USGS Libraries
Employees at Work
USGS Wallpapers
Biologic and Environmental Contamination

Most items in the gallery are in the public domain.

Keeping track of the 2009 hurricane season with Google Earth

Michael Ritter — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:05:48 +0000

The folks at Google Earth are at it again. Like last year, they have created a folder under “Weather” that lets you track the progress of the current hurricane season. Included in this folder you’ll find updated storm tracks courtesy of the National Hurricane Center. The current position, predicted track, storm overview, NHS storm advisory, reference information, and a near real-time news gadget are also provided.

Source of this post and image: Google LatLong.

The Physical Environment link: Hurricanes

Tweeting Geoscience

Michael Ritter — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:14:53 +0000

Twitter has become a phenomenon in the Web 2.0 universe. As many know, Twitter is a social messaging and microblogging site for staying connected to people in near-real time. Users send “tweets”, text-formatted posts of 140 characters in length to “followers”. Followers subscribe to these Twitter feeds, getting regular updates on their computers and smart phones. Twitter had been dominated by tech savvy Gen-Xers, Millennials, celebrities and well-known politicians like President Obama. The social networking site has experienced an explosion of subscribers using the service for a variety of different purposes.

Those in the geoscience community have found Twitter a useful way to keep other informed. Earth science – related professional and governmental organizations are using Twitter to keep the public informed of late breaking developments related to their missions. For example, NOAA’s OceanExplorer (http://twitter.com/oceanexplorer ) uses Twitter to broadcast updates to its site, announce new programs, highlight articles in which NOAA projects are discussed. In academia, professors can “tweet” when they are in their offices and accessible to colleagues and students.

Below is a list of Twitterers related to geoscience and what they are tweeting.

USGS: http://twitter.com/USGS
Type of Tweets: Program announcements, news, answers to USGS Frequently Asked Questions.

USGS News: http://twitter.com/USGSNews
Type of Tweets: News from the USGS

USGS Earthquake: http://twitter.com/USGS_Earthquake
Type of Tweets: recent earthquake activity

NASA Earth Observatory: http://twitter.com/NASA_EO
Type of Tweets: Imagery added to their site, site updates, new articles

Geostuff: twitter.com/geostuff
Type of Tweets: News articles

Science Dailybot: http://twitter.com/sciencedailybot
Type of Tweets: News fed from ScienceDaily, a premier online new source.

AEG Arizona: http://twitter.com/AEGArizona
Type of Tweets: News links, conference announcements

The GIS Forum: http://twitter.com/thegisforum
Type of Tweets: GIS in the new, workshop announcements, data resources, applications

GetGeologyJobs: http://twitter.com/GetGeologyJobs
Type of Tweets: Geology job postings