Trace Darwin’s Footsteps with Google’s New Virtual Tour of the Galapagos Islands

in Biology, Environment, Google | September 23rd, 2013

As famous­ly stud­ied as they are, the 18 Gala­pa­gos Islands haven’t been well mapped. And research in the Gala­pa­gos, sit­u­at­ed more than 500 miles west of Ecuador, is expen­sive and dif­fi­cult. Maybe that’s part of the islands’ allure—that and the stun­ning bio­di­ver­si­ty.

In part­ner­ship with the Charles Dar­win Foun­da­tion and Gala­pa­gos Nation­al Park, Google sent a team armed with Street View Trekker cam­eras to cre­ate an entire­ly new 360 degree Street View expe­ri­ence that makes three major islands, a frag­ile tor­toise breed­ing area and coastal areas, avail­able to vis­i­tors locat­ed any­where with an Inter­net con­nec­tion.

Dar­win made his first expe­di­tion to the islands 178 years ago. This might have been his first view of San Cristo­bal Island.

GalapagosApproach

After explor­ing San Cristobal’s rocky coast, Google trekkers made their way to Gala­pa­guera, a giant tor­toise breed­ing cen­ter, where they saw new­ly hatched babies and adults munch­ing on leaves and stalks.

Off the coast of Flo­re­ana Island, trekkers went under­wa­ter and caught images of seals play­ing in the water. They also shot images inside the Charles Dar­win Research Station’s ver­te­brate, inver­te­brate and plant col­lec­tions.

Google does a good job of doc­u­ment­ing its own process. Trekkers trav­eled to Gala­pa­gos in May and spent 10 days hik­ing, boat­ing, and div­ing. It’s fun to watch them climb and scoot around the islands loaded with a geo­des­ic cam­era back­pack.

Sci­en­tists get real­ly excit­ed when they find new tools to do their work. And why shouldn’t they? These islands are amaz­ing and are home to so many unique species, like the Marine Igua­na. We land­lub­bers may not get there any­time soon, but this is the next best thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

The Genius of Charles Dar­win Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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Enter E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life: Free Access to All The World’s Knowledge About Life

in Education, Environment, Science, TED Talks | September 16th, 2013

One of the trea­sures of our time, biol­o­gist E.O. Wil­son, the folksy and bril­liant author of two Pulitzer Prize-win­ning books and the world’s lead­ing author­i­ty on ants, is 84 years old and retired from his pro­fes­sor­ship at Har­vard. But even in retire­ment he came up with one of the most inno­v­a­tive new sci­en­tif­ic resources avail­able today: the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Life, a net­worked ency­clo­pe­dia of all the world’s knowl­edge about life.

Six years ago Wil­son announced his vision for such a project while accept­ing the 2007 TED Prize. He expressed a wish for a col­lab­o­ra­tive tool to cre­ate an infi­nite­ly expand­able page for each species—all 1.9 mil­lion known so far—where sci­en­tists around the world can con­tribute text and images.

Wilson’s dream came true, not long after he announced it, and the EOL was so pop­u­lar right away that it had to go off-line for a spell to expand its capac­i­ty to han­dle the traf­fic. The site was redesigned to be more acces­si­ble and to encour­age con­tri­bu­tions from users. It’s vision: to con­tin­ue to dynam­i­cal­ly cat­a­log every liv­ing species, as research is com­plet­ed, and to include the rough­ly 20,000 new species dis­cov­ered every year.

Wilson’s vision is man­i­fest in a fun and well-designed site use­ful for edu­ca­tors, aca­d­e­mics, and any curi­ous per­son with access to the Inter­net.

Search for a species or just browse. Each EOL tax­on­o­my page fea­tures a detailed overview of the species, research, arti­cles and media. Media can be fil­tered by images, video, and sound. There are 66 dif­fer­ent pieces of media about Tas­man­ian Dev­ils, for exam­ple. A group of Tassies, as they’re known, get pret­ty dev­il­ish over their din­ner in this video, con­tributed by an Aus­tralian Ph.D. stu­dent.

As E.O. Wil­son so elo­quent­ly puts it, the EOL has the poten­tial to inspire oth­ers to search for life, to under­stand it, and, most impor­tant­ly, to pre­serve it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

E.O. Wilson’s Olive Branch: The Cre­ation

Cen­tral Intel­li­gence: From Ants to the Web

Free Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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A Planetary Perspective: Trillions of Pictures of the Earth Available Through Google Earth Engine

in Education, Environment, Google, Science, Technology | September 9th, 2013

In 1972 the Earth Resources Tech­nol­o­gy Satel­lite, or Land­sat, launched into space with a mis­sion to cir­cle the plan­et every 16 days and take pic­tures of the Earth. For more than forty years, the Land­sat pro­gram has cre­at­ed the longest ever con­tin­u­ous record of Earth’s sur­face.

Now those images are avail­able to every­one. And thanks to Google Earth Engine, it’s pos­si­ble to down­load and ana­lyze them.

Five years ago NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey rewrote their pro­to­cols and made the images avail­able for free, tril­lions of them, a ridicu­lous­ly mas­sive col­lec­tion of pic­tures tak­en from more than 400 miles away, some of them unrec­og­niz­able.

Is that green patch in the Ama­zon basin a for­est or a pas­ture?

But with a lit­tle help from Google’s cloud, this data has amaz­ing pow­er. It used to be that only a big insti­tu­tion, like a uni­ver­si­ty or a coun­try, had the pro­cess­ing pow­er to down­load the data. With a sin­gle CPU it would take months to suck down the images. Now, it only takes a few hours. With that free­dom, small envi­ron­men­tal watch­dog agen­cies and mon­i­tor­ing groups have access to the same data that the big guys have had for years. All they need to do is write the algo­rithms to help inter­pret what they’re see­ing.

And best of all, we can all see the results.

Watch Las Vegas grow from a dusty casi­no town into sub­ur­ban sprawl.

See the Palm Islands bloom into being off the coast of Dubai between 1984 and 2012.

One of the most dev­as­tat­ing is to watch the her­ring­bone of roads devel­op in the Ama­zon over just 28 years.

Down­load GoogleEarth’s free plu­g­in to view pre­com­put­ed datasets, like this one ren­der­ing the few remain­ing places on the Earth that are more than a kilo­me­ter from the near­est road.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Bomb­ing Remem­bered with Google Earth

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site and fol­low her on Twit­ter. 

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How Climate Change Is Threatening Your Daily Cup of Coffee

in Environment, Food & Drink, Science | August 4th, 2013

Per­haps this will final­ly get your atten­tion. In Ethiopia, glob­al warm­ing is putting the cul­ti­va­tion of cof­fee at risk, to the point where the indige­nous Ethiopi­an cof­fee plant, Cof­fea ara­bi­ca, could go extinct with­in 70 years. That’s no laugh­ing mat­ter, espe­cial­ly if you con­sid­er that cof­fee orig­i­nat­ed in Ethiopia, and the coun­try remains an epi­cen­ter of cof­fee pro­duc­tion today. That’s the depress­ing … and per­haps moti­vat­ing … upshot of an oth­er­wise art­ful­ly-pro­duced film by The Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens (aka Kew Gar­dens) in Eng­land.  If you want to dig into the research show­ing the impact of cli­mate change on cof­fee, see the report pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2012 called: The Impact of Cli­mate Change on Indige­nous Ara­bi­ca Cof­fee (Cof­fea ara­bi­ca): Pre­dict­ing Future Trends and Iden­ti­fy­ing Pri­or­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The His­to­ry of Cof­fee and How It Trans­formed Our World

This is Cof­fee!: A 1961 Trib­ute to Our Favorite Stim­u­lant

New­ly added to our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es:

Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­a­ture and the Envi­ron­ment — YouTube — iTunes Video — Ken Hilt­ner, Prince­ton

How Cli­mate Works — YouTube — iTunes Video — Mul­ti­ple Profs, Prince­ton

 

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