Objective: The objective of the exercise is to provide some experience interpreting digitally delivered aerial imagery, and in the process to compare the imagery available in several systems. You've already started becoming familiar with Google Earth --- you've downloaded and installed the client software and maybe used the measuring and drawing tools. "Bing" is a tool from Microsoft that delivers aerial imagery without the need of a client beyond your browser. You can access it at "bing.com"; then, putting coordinates in the query box, clicking the "maps" tab, and selecting the "aerial view" gets you where you need to be.
These tools offer different kinds of support to the image interpreter (you) --- they limit scale ("zoom") differently; they both give you scale as a bar scale; Bing seems to give you less information. Where GE gives the viewer's elevation and the coordinates, Bing seems not to. They integrate terrain data with the image data, not quite as stereoscopic imagery, but, so that when you move the viewpoint, terrain is shown as if you had a 3D view of the image draped over the terrain.
The possibility of using the imagery side of Google Maps was raised in class. If you would like to use that rather than GE or Bing, it is OK with me, just let me know on the write up.
Assignment: For ten sites (eight of the sites listed below, and for two new ones of your own finding and choice) describe (in a paragraph each) what you see in the imagery, comparing Google Earth's and Bing's versions of the place and indicating which visual cues (below) seem to be most useful in figuring out each case. (It might help to try to zoom-in to determine what details you discern in each image, but sometimes zooming-out for context rather than enlarged detail is more useful. Try both.) For each of the new places the write-up should include the latitude and longitude of the place, plus a descrptive name (to attract a student next time).
Finally, what do you conclude about the interpretation of the imagery in these tools? Is the resolution of the image databases behind these tools similar? Adequate? Is Google or Bing consistently better for apparent resolution and quality? What added facilites might improve the tools? Which cues helped you notice and identify things in the images?
Aerial photo interpretation (API) is a lot of fun for geographers; in it we get to show-off the melding of our detailed knowledge of the world with our powers of logical deduction and inference to learn even more. (That's way cool.) Most API texts will tell you that there are several (visual) cues that aid in object identification and image interpretation (below). I'd hasten to emphasize the cognitive over the perceptual in the process.
44.275484, -123.254735
South of Monroe OR. What kinds of agricultural land use do you see
in the area (within 2 km)? What image clues are most useful in separating
things? What is this water feature? What is it doing there?
44.369432, -123.141946
Smith Rock State Park, Oregon. The place is a regional rock
climbing center. What to you make of the terrain and the surrounding
land use? What do you make of the circular, the rectagular and
the crescent shaped plots? And the mixture of green, beige and brown
plotsr? OF smooth and coarser textures? And what is that odd
geometrically patterned block about a half mile south of where
the river rounds the south end of rock formation?
47.108098, 17.569554
Ajka, Hungary. Can you find the alimina plant settling ponds
that ruptured on 4 Oct 2010? The resulting flood killed nine
and injured around 200 people, flooding several villages
with toxic mud, and eventually running into the Danube River.
Describe the industrial infrastructure that you can see.
32.155482, -110.859958
Davis-Monthan AFB dessert aricraft bone yard. It seems that
they move aircraft more frequently than the GE community updates
the labels that they have added to identify the aircraft.
32.139377, -110.867382
Pima Air and Space Museum, Tucson AZ. How many air planes are
on display here? How big (meters) is the largest one? What is the
smallest feature that you can see in the image? Can you make out
engines? propeller blades?
43.239521, -119.134071 (start zoomed out to 20 km elevation)
What is the blue and white feature? What are the smaller
green circles to the north of it?
32.251857, -111.121929
mountain, erosion/outwash, agriculture to the SW
42.866083, -106.416227 (30 km --- 0.5 km elevations)
Near Casper WY.
What does this area look like when "zoomed out"? Describe the
terrain before "zooming in". What do you see as you zoom in?
At what elevation do you see the airport?
What kinds of economic activity are you seeing?
42.788951, -106.650068
West of Casper. What is the geological feature? What do you make of the
(patterns of) tonal differences in the image?
What do you make of the intersections of the dendritic features
with the rock formations? From an oblique view
and with the terrain "on" --- do the image and terrain seem to
match well?
42.832749, -106.802102
What do you make of the northwest to southeast trending straight
lines, and their interaction with the drainage and road networks?
38.1943, -122.2999
What are the rectangles in the "used to be" wetlands?
What about all the housing in the area? Is is denser
nearer the water or further back?
37.5024, -122.03562
What are the green orange and white areas?
35.20085, -118.53681
Tehachapi Loop. What's going on here? How long is the loop?
How much elevation is gained?
39.910112, -120.808045
Williams Loop. On the Union Pacific Railroad's Feather River Route
through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
37.047800, -122.044139
West of Mt Hermon. What is going on here? Logging? Mining? Something else?
-30.77472, 121.50944
Super Pit, "Australia's largest open cut gold mine ... off the
Goldfields Highway on the south-east edge of Kalgoorie-Boulder,
Western Australia ... 3.5 km long, 1.5 km wide, and 360 m deep
... large enough to see from space" (Wikipedia). But then, with
the right equipment, one can see a mongoose from space.
39.908994, -105.231774
What do you make of this site? It is near the infamous Rocky Flats
nuclear processing facility (the remians of which might be at
39.891251, -105.20345), and perhaps offers a brighter
route to the future.
Or, flipping it around a little, can you find and provide coordinates for any of these places?
Black Thunder coal mine 70km south of Gillette, WY.
Peabody's North Antelope-Rochelle coal mine.
El Chino, (Santa Rita mine) open-pit copper mine, located 24 km east of Silver City, NM (from Wikipedia's articles on El Chino Mine and Open-pit mining).
Haerwusu coal mine, China's largest coal mine in northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Maybe around lat: 39.888490, lon: 110.266798
Oil tanks in Cushing, OK. (Associated with teh Keystone Pipeline.)
The Hull-Rust-Mahoning Pit, called by some "the largest open-pit iron mine in the world", near Hibbing, Minnesota.
Largest Oil Refinery in the US: Baytown (TX) Refinery (ExxonMobile)
at 572,500 bbl/day it is about half the size of the world's
largest (Jamnagar Refinery, Jamnagar, Gurarat, India 1,300,000
bbl/day).
Pando, The Quaking Giant
a quaking aspen colony in Utah’s Fishlake National
Forest, is among the world’s largest, heaviest, and oldest
living organisms. Hint from Backpacker Magazine Sept 2010)
"To take in Pando’s size, park at Doctor Creek on UT 25 and
climb 500 vertical feet up Mytoge Mountain on the Lakeshore
National Recreation Trail. At mile three, look back to see Pando
straddling the road. Continue for a 15-mile loop."
Utah Data Center. An NSA facility. "Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethern headquarters..." near Bluffdale, UT. (see: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter)
Where is Kangbashi, the "Ghost City", near Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangbashi_New_Area for Wikipedia's description of this "new city" of one million that seems to now (2012) be a mis-allocation. The BBC reported on it 6 Dec 2012.