Tech on the Trail - A Bird’s Eye View
August 31, 2007
The Big Blue Marble – Mother Earth, floats in the depths of space before you. Now grab it with your mouse pointer and give it a spin. Continents roll by, mountain ranges, seas & oceans, polar ice caps – zoom in closer and examine obscure islands, jungles, canyons, deserts, rivers. The whole world is within your grasp.
Nowadays, anyone with a decent internet connection and a somewhat modern computer has access to an unprecedented amount of information about our planet, both scientific and geographical. Where do you want to go today? Seriously, Magellan would have fainted dead to the floor. One of the great online satellite programs is Google Earth. With its variety of imagery, mapping, search and layers of technical data - Explorers, tech-heads, and armchair adventurers will all find something useful or entertaining.
Navigation is accomplished through mouse and text based searches. Type in a place you are looking for and if it is in the database you will soon be speeding across the face of the globe to your destination. Resolution varies by region, but a large percentage is in high-detail. It is possible to pan, zoom, rotate and change the elevation and angle of perspective. This makes for a wonderful research tool. Always wondered what was on the other side of the mountain? Now it is just a mouse drag away.
Google Earth is quite user friendly and offers many features of a consumer nature – places such as stores, lodging, gas stations etc. Just select the layers you are interested in and they will be indicated with clear markers.
Another wonderful and publicly available program is NASA Worldwind which offers similar information with much more more technical data derived from government landsats. This program has a little more of a learning curve and seems to require more processing power, otherwise the refresh values can be slow.
Both of these require downloading a program to your computer and an internet connection. Take a look at the basic requirements and make sure your computer meets the necessary specifications.
In future installments of Technology on the Trail we will examine these tools in greater depth, looking at some of the mapping & coordinate features and how to get the best use of these for outdoor recreation.
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