Science From On High
Google Earth gives researchers new access
If Christopher Columbus wanted to travel the globe today, he wouldn’t need three ships and the financial backing of royalty — an Internet connection would do the trick. With Google Earth’s three-dimensional interactive view of the planet, Columbus could sail to the New World from the comfort of his living room (after checking out an overhead view of his house in Genoa).
By combining satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic data, Google Earth provides views of planet Earth — and its moon and Mars — that were once available only to the well-funded and tech-savvy. And while the computer program offers unprecedented virtual trips to places many would never be able to visit, such as the Colosseum and the Galápagos Islands, Google Earth isn’t just a tool for voyeuristic global tourists. The technology is changing the way scientists conduct research.
Some are using the tool for good old scientific discovery, à la Lewis and Clark, who documented much of the wildlife of the American West. Ecologist Adelia Barber, for example, scouts the rugged and largely inaccessible terrain of California’s White Mountains seeking the long-lived bristlecone pine. Barber, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has found that Google Earth’s resolution of that swatch of the globe is good enough for her to tell a bristlecone forest from a stand of pi±on pine, greatly simplifying her efforts to map and study bristlecones.