KenMankoff

Mars Geology

Data from the U.S.G.S. PIGWAD site converted to display in Google Mars. View the KML layer or the legend (also available through the layer).

Mars Geology

@conference{skinner2006digital,
  title={{Digital renovation of the atlas of Mars
         1: 15,000,000-scale global geologic series maps}},
  author={Skinner Jr, JA and Hare, TM and Tanaka, KL},
  booktitle={37th Annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference},
  volume={37},
  pages={2331},
  year={2006}
}

Earthquakes

I came across a database of earthquakes from 1960 to almost present. I converted it from the existing form to KML so it can be seen in both Google Earth and Google Maps. Both views incorporate a temporal component.

For the Google Earth view, magnitude as been encoded as pin size and depth has been encoded as height above the Earth. A few interesting regions where the deep quakes occur, such as east of the Andes, pop out.

Earthquakes

Pine Island Glacier Publication TimeMap

In which I present a rough geo-spatial-temporal map of Pine Island Glacier (PIG) publications.

Geo-spatial-temporal time-map of Pine Island Glacier (PIG) publications

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GISTEMP.StationData

NASA GISS has recently announced another year of the surface temperature trends. Last year, 2009, tied for the 2nd warmest year on record, and the past decade (January 2000 to December 2009) was the warmest on record.

I took the time this weekend to re-create a Google Earth layer showing these data. This visualization allows you to see a broad geospatial overview, and then select any particular location and see both long-term trends and even the data point for each individual month.

Download (330K)

GISTEMP.StationData

GISTEMP.StationData

KDM-IDL Code Library

I have spent quite a bit of time developing IDL code in the past, and it appears I will do some more in the near-term future. I have decided to release my IDL code library to the public so that others can perhaps benefit from my work. This is a work-in-progress and access is via Subversion.

One subset of the library is the KDM_KML lib for writing KML files. This code should make it fairly simple to display data sets in Google Earth from IDL.

I have currently implemented about 50% of the KML API and will get the rest implemented as time goes on. Right now layers can have overlays, points (placemarks), or linestrings (paths). Any element (that the API supports) can have a timestamp, and styles are supported too. With knowledge of the KML API you can create artistic balloons with whatever content you like that can even link to each other.

KML Interactive Sampler

If you create Google Earth or KML layers, you’ll want to find a 2nd monitor and keep the KML Interactive Sampler open full screen. An invaluable resource for hand-building a KML or when writing code.

KML Interactive Sampler

Geo-Tagging Photos

I have ~2700 photos from my recent trip to Antarctica. All but a few dozen were taken while on the ship, and the GPS track of the ship is known. The few that were taken off ship were within a three mile radius while deploying the ITP. If you don’t have a ship recording your GPS for you, you can get simple GPS systems for less than $100, or even a few $10s of dollars on eBay. The TrackStick is good for this type of project as it does not have a screen or realtime outputs.

I wanted to geotag all my photos by adding the latitude and longitude to the JPEG EXIF data. I was going to code it as the algorithm is quite simple (for each image, get the creation time, find the GPS location nearest that time in the GPS list, and add the (lat,lon) coordinates to the image), but not surprisingly this problem has already been solved. Repeatedly.

Three steps are required.

1. Convert your GPS data into GPX format. If you are comfortable on the command line then use gpsbabel. If not, then go here for a web interface to gpsbabel. If you need help post in the comments. If you were on NBP09-01 a GPX file of our cruise is here.
2. Add the GPS coordinates to the image EXIF tags. There are many tools that will take a GPX or NMEA file and add latitude and longitude coordinates to your photos. I use gpicsync and photoGPSEditor looks nice too.
3. Output KML files. gpicsync does this for you, and has a list of other software that might help here. You can also upload your photos to Picasa and get a KML file that way (instructions).

The end result might look like this.

Photos from Antarctica

If you’ve been following this blog you’ve seen a dozen or so low-quality photos posted during my trip. Now you can see full resolution pictures. In total, I took 2718 photos during the 54 days between when the Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP) left Punta Arenas, Chile and returned. I’ve selected 350 of the best ones and uploaded them. There are 31 from the sea ice science projects, 54 of the NBP itself, 66 of animals (added to the animal photos from last year), 101 of the Pine Island Glacier, and 98 miscellaneous photos of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas, sea ice, sunsets, and sunrises.

You can view all of the photos listed above in the various Antarctica photo albums, or you can view them all geospatially (KMZ) in Google Earth. The ship recorded GPS a few times a second, and I have a one-minute (temporal) resolution data file that I used to geotag the photos.

Notes: If you are viewing the photos on the website, you ought to have the Cooliris plugin installed. Load times might be a bit slow, this computer is hosted at home. If you don’t see any photos in Google Earth you’ll need to drag the time slider to the right. They’ll pop up as you pass the time they were taken.

NBP Photos Geotagged in Google Earth