Google Earth Imagery: The end of October

What do Elvis’ Graceland and Iran’s Marmar Palace have in common? Both estates have been updated with new imagery in Google Earth and Google Maps!

Over the last few weeks, the imagery team has updated hundreds of images. To give you a taste of this new data, today we’ll look at several interesting features that have been updated with new imagery from across the globe.

First, I’d like to look at a fantastic and majestic terrestrial landform known as the star dune. Star dunes form pyramidal shapes that grow upward and are characterized by multiple radiating dune crests. Shown below is a perspective satellite image of a star dune field within the Badain Jaran Desert of China. The desert contains Earth’s tallest stationary dunes, reaching heights of 500 meters!

Perspective view of star dunes of Badain Jaran Desert, China
One of my favorite hobbies is scrambling around volcanic sites throughout the western United States, and many of my favorite areas are located in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Within this river plain, one of the youngest volcanic flow features of the region comprises the Hell’s Half Acre lava flow field. In the aerial image below, taken this past September, you can see “windows” of older river bed material (now farmland) that were not buried during lava flow emplacement.

Farmland enclosed by lava flow, Snake River Plain, Idaho
Can you identify the unusual feature relationship seen in the satellite image below? Yes, train tracks cut to the northeast across the airport runway! Those tracks belong to the Kyber Railway, and their two vintage steam locomotives take passengers 42 kilometers to the town of Landi Kotal in Pakistan’s mountainous Kyber Pass.

Peshawar International Airport, Pakistan
Below is a fun water sport activity captured in high resolution aerial imagery of the southeastern coast of Auckland, New Zealand. You can see the kayakers paddles as well as the submerged sandbars and boulders of Thorne Bay.

Kayakers in Thorne Bay, New Zealand
We can see the Marmar Palace of Tehran, Iran, a.k.a the Marble Palace in the updated satellite image below. It is associated with the Pahlavi dynasty, and is still used today by the Iranian government.

The Marble Palace, Tehran, Iran.
In my opinion, most good things start and end with Elvis references, so our last example showcases updated imagery of Graceland, including the private customized Convair 880 jet Elvis used while hopping across the globe.

Graceland, Memphis Tennessee
If you’d like to receive an email notification when the Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite site(s), we’ve got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

These are only a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Bellingham, WA; Bemidji, MN; Brookings, SD; Davenport, IA; Emporia, KS; Grinnel, IA; Idaho Falls, ID; Klamamth Falls, OR; Lawrence, KS; Lovell, WY; Nephi, UT; Pittsfield, MA; Portland, OR; San Francisco Peninsula, CA; Scottsbluff, NE; Seattle, WA; St Louis, MO; Terre Haute, IN; Wasco, OR; Williston, ND; Wolf Point, MT

Spain: Huesca, Logrono

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Angola, Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Gaza Strip, Greenland, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Jan Mayen, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, New Zealand, North Korea, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Svalbard, Taiwan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, West Bank, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

The Thailand Floods

 

As Google often does during disasters (such as the Gulf Oil Spill and the Japan Earthquake, Google has set up a Crisis Response page to help provide information for those trying to assist with the flooding in Thailand.

The flooding has become quite devastating and more widespread than most people realize. From Google’s page:

Thailand is currently facing its worst flooding in 50 years. Flood waters have swamped more than two-thirds of the country, submerging rice fields and shutting down hundreds of factories while over 900,000 families and businesses have been impacted and hundreds of lives have been tragically lost. National relief efforts are now focused on providing essential food, clean water and shelter to displaced people and restoring damaged infrastructure to the Kingdom of Smiles.

You can use the map on their page, or download various elements as KML files to be able to browse them in Google Earth. For example, here is the “Flood affected areas across Thailand” map (KML), which gives you a quick glance at the hardest hit areas.

 

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For fresh satellite imagery of the area, you can use the imagery released by the NASA Earth Observatory a few days ago. You can view the image on their site.

 

thailandimagery.jpg 

Google Maps Mania

The earthquake tsunami changed the Ice

 

When the earthquake (and subsequent tsunami) struck Japan earlier this year, we provided as much data as possible about the disaster. What many people didn’t realize was that the tsunami continued to travel across the ocean, eventually striking Antarctica with a great deal of force. This caused some flexing and breaking of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, which resulted in two large icebergs being released, reminicient of the chunk of the Wilkins Ice Shelf that broke off a few years ago. Combined, the icebergs cover an area of 125 square kilometers, or more than twice the size of New York’s Manhattan Island!

 

sulzberger_sar_2011075.jpg 

 

You can download the KMZ file here.

If you turn on the “Borders and Labels” layer in Google Earth, you’ll see the yellow outlines match up quite well with the dark patches in the overlay, as seen here:

 

overlay.jpg