Sarawak: The damaged rainforest

The state of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, is the site of an interesting political battle recently. Their Chief Minister claims that 70 of Sarawak’s forest cover is intact, but imagery from Google Earth seems to indicate that it’s far worse than that. In fact, some environmentalist groups estimate that logging has cost Sarawak 90 of it’s primary forest cover.

Mongabay has written a very detailed article about this situation, including quite a few photos. For example, the image below clearly shows logging roads all throughout Sarawak, while virtually none are visible in Brunei to the north.

 

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Google Earth is making it increasing difficult for governments to lie about this kind of behavior. As the pace and quality of imagery updates continue to improve, things will only get better for those that wish to expose this type of thing.

Be sure to read the entire article on Mongabay for more information and many more photos.

Google Earth: Mount Rushmore looks great!

Peter Olson, who has previously shown us such excellent models such as Machu Picchu, the Disney Monorail and the Tenerife disaster, is at it once again.

This time, Peter has created a very detailed model of Mount Rushmore, which looks far better than the default (terrain-based) model. Check it out:

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In addition to the famous faces on the mountain, Peter also built the “Hall of Records” behind them. The Hall was never completed, but you can learn more about it on the National Parks Traveler site, as it’s quite interesting.

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To see it all for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file or you can view the details in the Google 3D Warehouse.