New Google-Powered Site Tracks Global Deforestation in ‘Near-Real-Time’

in Current Affairs, Environment, Google, Maps | March 5th, 2014

In Sep­tem­ber we told you about tril­lions of satel­lite images of Earth, gen­er­at­ed by the Land­sat, that are now avail­able to the pub­lic.

Now we can share an inter­ac­tive tool that is using some of those Land­sat images to stop ille­gal defor­esta­tion.

With help from Google Earth Engine, the World Resources Insti­tute launched Glob­al For­est Watch, an online for­est mon­i­tor­ing and alert sys­tem that allows indi­vid­ual com­put­er users to watch forests around the world change in an almost real-time stream of imagery.

Whis­tle blow­ers are mak­ing pow­er­ful use of the Glob­al For­est Watch tool. Using spa­tial data streams avail­able on the site to observe for­est changes in south­east­ern Peru, a num­ber of users sub­mit­ted alerts about rapid­ly esca­lat­ing defor­esta­tion near a gold mine and riv­er val­ley. In anoth­er case, observers sub­mit­ted an alert about ille­gal log­ging in the Repub­lic of the Con­go.

Five years ago, NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey lift­ed pro­to­cols that kept Land­sat images pro­pri­etary. Now, agen­cies like the World Resources Institute—and even tiny cit­i­zen watch­dog groups around the world—have access to incred­i­bly rich tools and data. Some of the imagery is hard to inter­pret. Glob­al For­est Watch devel­oped a num­ber of dif­fer­ent data lay­ers for users to apply, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to mon­i­tor for­est areas for trends or ille­gal log­ging. The video at the top of this page gives a good overview of how the site works. This one gives more detail about how to use the maps on the Glob­al For­est Watch site.

Select an area of the world and then select a data set that inter­ests you. Choose to look at ter­rain, satel­lite, road, tree height, or com­pos­ite images of a par­tic­u­lar region. Data lay­ers can be lay­ered on top of one anoth­er to show trends in for­est man­age­ment. In Indone­sia, for exam­ple, you can use the FORMA alerts but­ton to see what has already been report­ed in that area of the humid trop­ics.

How can you tell if for­est change is due to ille­gal log­ging? Turn on the For­est Use fil­ters to see which areas are autho­rized for log­ging and min­ing and which are pro­tect­ed. In Indone­sia, many areas are des­ig­nat­ed for oil palm pro­duc­tion, but expan­sion of those crops are often asso­ci­at­ed with loss of nat­ur­al for­est.

Do your own sleuthing. The site is designed to har­ness data from gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic sci­en­tists, along with obser­va­tion from indi­vid­u­als (us). There is even infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that are grow­ing oil palm trees, so it’s pos­si­ble that a dili­gent user could catch an over-aggres­sive grow­er step­ping over the for­est bound­ary.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

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

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Jack Kerouac’s On The Road Turned Into Google Driving Directions & Published as a Free eBook

in Literature, Maps | February 10th, 2014

A cou­ple weeks ago, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed for you Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road. Now we have anoth­er Ker­oua­cian map for you — a map for our times. Gre­gor Weich­brodt, a Ger­man col­lege stu­dent, took all of the geo­graph­ic stops men­tioned in On the Road, plugged them into Google Maps, and end­ed up with a 45-page man­u­al of dri­ving direc­tions, divid­ed into chap­ters par­al­lel­ing those of Ker­ouac’s orig­i­nal book. You can read the man­u­al — On the Road for 17,527 Miles– as a free ebook. Just click the image above to view it online (or click here). Like­wise, you can pur­chase a print copy on Lulu and per­haps make it the basis for your own road trip. Won­der­ing how long such a trip might take? Google Maps indi­cates that Ker­ouac’s jour­ney cov­ered some 17,527 miles and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly took some 272 hours.

Note: You can find lec­tures (1 + 2) dis­cussing the impor­tance of On the Road in Yale’s course, The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945. It appears in the Lit­er­a­ture sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via @SteveSilberman and PRI

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

500 Free eBooks: Down­load Great Books for Free

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The Tom Waits Map: A Mapping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jungles

in Maps, Music | January 29th, 2014

“And what becomes of all the lit­tle boys who nev­er comb their hair? They’re lined up all around the block, on the Nick­el over there.” So sings Tom Waits on 1980’s “On the Nick­el,” which he orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for Ralph Wait­e’s epony­mous fea­ture film, a sto­ry of shame, degra­da­tion, and good times in the sketchi­est part of down­town Los Ange­les, through which runs 5th Street — the “Nick­el” of the title. That part of town has man­aged an aston­ish­ing cleanup since 1980 (then again, most parts of town have, includ­ing the once-seething cor­ner ref­er­enced by Heartat­tack and Vine, the title of Waits’ album from that year) to the point that you’ll now find, just off 5th, the new-wave retro, hip­ster-friend­ly Nick­el Din­er: a favorite eatery of mine, inci­den­tal­ly, but hard­ly one describ­able with Waits’ sig­na­ture rasp, a force­ful­ly resigned instru­ment tuned to evoke the clas­si­cal­ly, near-mytho­log­i­cal­ly ragged Amer­i­can life.

Still, you can find the old Nick­el on The Tom Waits Map, which marks out all the lyri­cal­ly iden­ti­fi­able places in Waits’ Amer­i­ca, from Min­neapo­lis’ 9th Street (“Hey Char­lie, I’m preg­nant and liv­ing on the 9th street,” goes “Christ­mas Card From A Hook­er In Min­neapo­lis”) to the state of Ida­ho (“Dan­ny says we got­ta go, got­ta go to Ida­ho, but we can’t go surf­ing ’cause it’s 20 below,” on “Dan­ny Says”).

We may think of Waits’ artis­tic per­sona as a cer­tain low­er slice of Amer­i­ca made song, but this map, when zoomed out to a glob­al lev­el, reveals ref­er­ences to many exot­ic lands, as when he sings about “a Hong Kong driz­zle on Cuban heels,” from the per­spec­tive of a char­ac­ter who “drank with all the Chi­na­men, walked the sew­ers of Paris” and of “Radion the human tor­so, deep from the jun­gles of Africa.”

The Tom Waits map itself, in fact, comes from an obvi­ous­ly die-hard Swedish fan by the name of Jonas Nord­ström. As he and the rest of the Waits faith­ful know, the man does­n’t just speak to an askew sen­si­bil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca; he speaks to askew sen­si­bil­i­ties all through­out human­i­ty.

via @sheerly

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Big Time, the Con­cert Film Cap­tur­ing Tom Waits on His Best Tour Ever (1988)

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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The University of Richmond Animates the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

in History, Maps | January 7th, 2014

rates_of_travel

In 1902, the new­ly estab­lished Carnegie Insti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton set out to devel­op “a real­ly first rate atlas of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” Work on the atlas began in earnest in 1912, under the direc­tion of the naval his­to­ri­an Charles O. Paullin, who spent the bet­ter part of the next 15 years bring­ing it to life. In 1929, the Amer­i­can Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety (AGS), along with the emi­nent geo­g­ra­ph­er John K. Wright, took over the project and brought it to com­ple­tion. The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States was final­ly pub­lished in 1932 to wide crit­i­cal acclaim. Called a “mon­u­ment to his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship,” the com­pendi­um fea­tured near­ly 700 indi­vid­ual maps that gave visu­al insights into 500 years of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Top­ic cov­ered includ­ed the “explo­ration and set­tle­ment of the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent, the loca­tion of col­leges and church­es, dis­putes over inter­na­tion­al and state bound­aries, vot­ing in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and in Con­gress, reforms from women’s suf­frage to workmen’s com­pen­sa­tion, trans­porta­tion, indus­tries, agri­cul­ture, com­merce, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, mil­i­tary his­to­ry” and much more.

The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States remains a valu­able his­tor­i­cal resource today. But, for all of these years, it had one notable short­com­ing. Around the time of its first pub­li­ca­tion, John K. Wright acknowl­edged that “The ide­al his­tor­i­cal atlas might well be a col­lec­tion of motion-pic­ture maps, if these could be dis­played on the pages of a book with­out the para­pher­na­lia of pro­jec­tor, reel, and screen.” The tech­nol­o­gy that would lend itself to cre­at­ing motion-pic­ture maps was­n’t avail­able in the 1930s. But it is today. And thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Richmond’s Dig­i­tal Schol­ar­ship Lab, we can now view The Atlas of the His­tor­i­cal Geog­ra­phy of the Unit­ed States in a new dig­i­tal, some­times ani­mat­ed for­mat. If you want to see a good exam­ple of his­tor­i­cal data put into motion, then you might want to check out this map of Amer­i­can Explo­rations in the West, 1803–1852. (Click here and then click “Ani­mate” at the bot­tom of the screen.) This map will trace for you the expe­di­tions of Lewis and Clark and many oth­er explor­ers. Then, if you’re ready to be an explor­er your­self, you can start your jour­ney through the dig­i­tized atlas by enter­ing the Table of Con­tents.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Hen­ry David Thoreau’s Hand-Drawn Map of Cape Cod (1866)

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Geog­ra­phy of World Cul­tures by Mar­tin Lewis (Stan­ford) in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Online Cours­es

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An Interactive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Journey in Homer’s Odyssey

in Literature, Maps | December 16th, 2013

odyssey interactive map

The Odyssey, one of Home­r’s two great epics, nar­rates Odysseus’ long, strange trip home after the Tro­jan war. Dur­ing their ten-year jour­ney, Odysseus and his men had to over­come divine and nat­ur­al forces, from bat­ter­ing storms and winds to dif­fi­cult encoun­ters with the Cyclops Polyphe­mus, the can­ni­bal­is­tic Laestry­gones, the witch-god­dess Circe and the rest. And they took a most cir­cuitous route, bounc­ing all over the Mediter­ranean, mov­ing first down to Crete and Tunisia. Next over to Sici­ly, then off toward Spain, and back to Greece again.

If you’re look­ing for an easy way to visu­al­ize all of the twists and turns in The Odyssey, then we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with the inter­ac­tive map host­ed on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s web­site. The map breaks down Odysseus’ voy­age into 14 key scenes and locates them on a mod­ern map.

Mean­while, if you’re inter­est­ed in the whole con­cept of ancient trav­el, I’d sug­gest revis­it­ing one of our pre­vi­ous posts: Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map. It tells you all about ORBIS, a geospa­tial net­work mod­el, that lets you sim­u­late jour­neys in Ancient Roman. You pick the points of ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion for a trip, and ORBIS will recon­struct the dura­tion and finan­cial cost of mak­ing the ancient jour­ney. Pret­ty cool stuff.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free

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Henry David Thoreau’s Hand-Drawn Map of Cape Cod (1866)

in Art, Literature, Maps | October 17th, 2013

HDT_Cape_Cod_large

Hen­ry David Thore­au wrote in 1866:

“Wish­ing to get a bet­ter view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, cov­ers more than two thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may nev­er see any trace…I have spent, in all, about three weeks on the Cape; walked from East­ham to Province­town twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the Bay side also…but hav­ing come so fresh to the sea, I have got but lit­tle salt­ed.”

You can click the image above to see it in a larg­er for­mat. For many oth­er maps made by Thore­au, vis­it the “Thore­au Lands and Prop­er­ty Sur­vey” col­lec­tion at the Con­cord Free Pub­lic Library. Also find works by Thore­au in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooksand Free Audio Books. 

via Steve Sil­ber­man

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

in Animation, History, Maps, Politics | October 4th, 2013

The Sec­ond World War was waged over six long years on every con­ti­nent save South Amer­i­ca and Antarc­ti­ca. Sev­en­ty-some years lat­er, the dai­ly shifts of the Euro­pean The­ater’s front lines can be tracked in under sev­en min­utes, thanks to a mys­te­ri­ous, map-lov­ing ani­ma­tor known var­i­ous­ly as Emper­or Tiger­star or Kaiser Tiger­star (the lat­ter accounts for the hel­met-wear­ing kit­ten grac­ing the upper cor­ner of his World War I time-lapse).

The pow­er-shift­ing col­ors (blue for Allies, red for Axis) are mes­mer­iz­ing, as is a relent­less timer tick­ing off the days between Ger­many’s inva­sion of Poland on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939 and VE Day, May 8, 1945. Roy­al­ty-free music by Kevin MacLeod and audio sam­ples rang­ing from Hitler and Mus­soli­ni’s dec­la­ra­tions of war to Roo­sevelt’s Day of Infamy speech add import.

I def­i­nite­ly felt like throw­ing some tick­er tape around when blue tri­umphed, but most­ly I was curi­ous about this Emper­or Tiger­star, who relied on such dis­parate sources as Chris Bish­op’s Mil­i­tary Atlas of World War II and Wikipedia to cre­ate this extra­or­di­nary record in Win­dows Paint.

Care­ful read­ing of his blog reveals a diehard his­to­ry buff with a weak­ness for met­al music, whole­some CGI movies, and sta­tis­tics.

He’s also a worka­holic. His YouTube chan­nel boasts a bog­gling assort­ment of map ani­ma­tions. This in addi­tion to an alter­nate YouTube channel where he remaps his­to­ry in response to his own “what if” type prompts. Some­how he finds the time to pre­side over  The Blank Atlas, a site whose mem­bers con­tribute unla­beled, non-copy­right­ed maps avail­able for free pub­lic down­load. And he may well be a brony, as evi­denced by the video he was pur­port­ed­ly work­ing on this sum­mer, World War II: As Told by Ponies.

Only time will tell.

Mean­while, let us hope that he makes good on his threat to make a uni­ver­sal World War II map ani­ma­tion. Could that be the secret project he’s aim­ing to launch on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014? I can’t wait to find out.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

5,000 Years of Reli­gion in 90 Sec­onds

Ayun Hal­l­i­day did­n’t know she’d be keep­ing things fresh by fail­ing to lis­ten to a sin­gle sec­ond of 8th grade Geog­ra­phy. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Vladimir Nabokov Creates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

in Literature, Maps | August 22nd, 2013

UllysesMap

Click the image above for a larg­er ver­sion

Just above you’ll find a sketched-out map of the paths Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom took through Dublin on June 16, 1904. If you’ve ever read James Joyce’s Ulysses (find it in our lists of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books), you may well have tried draw­ing one of these your­self, con­nect­ing the loca­tions as each chap­ter finds one of the pro­tag­o­nists some­where else in Ire­land’s cap­i­tal on that “ordi­nary” day. Maybe you want­ed to test the plau­si­bil­i­ty of the com­mon asser­tion that, giv­en accu­ra­cy and detail with which Joyce wrote about the city, one could, in case of the apoc­a­lypse, build the city all over again using the nov­el as a plan. This par­tic­u­lar Ulysses fan map, how­ev­er, comes from the hand of a very spe­cial read­er indeed: Vladimir Nabokov, author of a few much-dis­cussed works of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture him­self, includ­ing Loli­ta, Pale Fire, and Speak, Mem­o­ry.

For those who teach Ulysses, Nabokov has a sug­ges­tion: “Instead of per­pet­u­at­ing the pre­ten­tious non­sense of Home­r­ic, chro­mat­ic, and vis­cer­al chap­ter head­ings, instruc­tors should pre­pare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s inter­twin­ing itin­er­aries clear­ly traced.” A post from Raynor Ganan quotes him as say­ing that, adding, “Would you not have donat­ed a litre of your own spinal flu­id to audit this lec­ture?” Indeed, Nabokov speaks from expe­ri­ence, hav­ing not only pro­duced well-respect­ed lit­er­a­ture but taught it, too. The fruits of his time at the front of the class­room appear in his col­lec­tion Lec­tures on Lit­er­a­ture, though if you want to get as close as pos­si­ble to the expe­ri­ence of sit­ting in on one of Nabokov’s class­es, go back into our archives and watch the WQED drama­ti­za­tion, star­ring Christo­pher Plum­mer, of his talk on Kaf­ka at Cor­nell. It won’t give you any insight into Joyce’s Dublin, grant­ed, but some Yale grad stu­dents’ more recent project to dig­i­tal­ly, inter­ac­tive­ly map Ulysses just might.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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