HR: 1340h
AN: IN43A-0899 [Abstracts]
TI: An Archive of Science KML Datasets
AU: * Valcic, L
EM: fslv@hawaii.edu
AF: Alaska Volcano Observatory, Geophysical Institute,
903 Koyukuk Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AU: Bailey, J E
EM: jbailey@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Volcano Observatory, Geophysical Institute,
903 Koyukuk Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AU: Bailey, J E
EM: jbailey@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, 909 Koyukuk Drive,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AU: Webley, P
EM: pwebley@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Volcano Observatory, Geophysical Institute,
903 Koyukuk Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AU: Webley, P
EM: pwebley@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, 909 Koyukuk Drive,
University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AU: Dehn, J
EM: jdehn@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Alaska Volcano Observatory, Geophysical Institute,
903 Koyukuk Drive, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AB:
Google Earth has become a worldwide phenomena that has opened millions of people's eyes to the potential
capabilities of Virtual Globes. However, it is the concurrent development of Keyhole Markup Language (KML) that
has provided the best method for people to visualize their own datasets within these Globes. This has been
particularly true for the earth sciences where there is an abundance of geographically located data, but not every
researcher or educator has the resources or technical expertise to manipulate this data using traditional GIS
resources. KML provides a simple method for users to visualize their data in Google Earth, Google Maps, and
since its Open Geospatial Consortium designation as a best practice, an increasing number of other
Geobrowsers. In the case of the Google browsers many KML features can be created directly through the
interface and don't even require the user to directly view any code.
As both KML capabilities and scientists' understanding of the language have evolved, visualizations that have
become more dynamic and increasingly complex. These creations have come to the attention of other scientists
and the public general through the Google Earth Community forum. Many interesting and imaginative uses of
KML in science exist on these pages, but locating them can often be difficult due to the large volume of content.
Google's KML archive and Google Earth Blog's science listings have provided filtering for much of this content, but
opportunity still exists for a quality controlled archive of science-dedicated KML. At the University of Alaska we are
developing an archive that fills this need.
UR: http://kml.images.alaska.edu
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting