SANTA CRUZ – Six years after its launch, Google Earth has been downloaded more than 1 billion times and has been used to take virtual tours of the Roman Colosseum, map the extent of destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, survey minefields and track elephant migrations through Kenya.
One of the first examples of a person using Google Earth to enhance their participation in the democratic process though occurred along the Santa Cruz County and Santa Clara County border, where a Google employee used the tool to analyze a controversial logging proposal.
In 2004 Google purchased Keyhole Inc., a company that pioneered the use of high-resolution satellite imagery to create 3-D visualizations of earth, and in 2005 Google Earth was launched.
In the summer of 2005 the San Jose Water Co. announced a plan to log 1,000 acres of its land in the mountains above Los Gatos. The permit the company submitted for would have given them the right to log the land in perpetuity.
Rebecca Moore, a Google software engineering manager who lives near Summit Road and Highway 17, saw an opportunity to use Google Earth to vet the water company”s project.
“One of the big issues was that it is a densely populated area, thousands of people live all around this area,” Moore said. “There are schools, day care centers, churches, all within a few hundred yards of the proposed logging zone. And, as we understood it, the logging would be every day.”
At the time a company executive said the proposal was a “modest, careful, rational and efficient plan that is mindful of the environment and residents,” and would reduce the risk of fire in the wooded area. They submitted a black and white topography map to outline the site.
Moore, who was part of a group of residents near the site that was concerned about potential impacts, created a 3-D fly-over presentation of the proposed logging area to show the proximity of homes, creeks and roads that could not be visualized with the company”s map.
“We are increasingly seeing people using these new tools to create and acquire better information,” said Warren Sack, a UC Santa Cruz associate professor of film and digital media who works on ways to improve public interaction with government data and information through Internet tools.
“They have definitely upped the ante in terms of presenting a compelling argument when most government agencies still see a PowerPoint presentation as the height of technology.”
The initial presentation showed that logging trucks would need to take winding roads that children walk on to get to school, and how the project could contaminate streams with excess sediment. The residents raised concerns that the large trees the company planned to log prevented fires from spreading, and it was the underbrush that needed to go. Moore showed the presentation to Al Gore, who subsequently backed the cause.
But the “smoking gun” was still to come.
In order to be eligible for the logging permit with no expiration, the site can be no greater than 2,500 acres. The company said they had 2,002 acres of timberland. Kenneth Adelman flew Moore over the area in a helicopter so they could take more than 700 photos. Adelia Barber, a UC Santa Cruz doctoral student in ecology at the time, helped Moore analyze the photos. Moore then imported the information into Google Earth and took her findings to a forestry board hearing in San Jose.
“They had over 2,700 acres. It was our smoking gun,” she said. “Cal Fire then did their own assessment and confirmed that they had well over 2,500 acres.”
The proposal was rejected.
“What you are talking about is the new wrinkle in public participation. It”s a new form of participation,” Sack said. “She wouldn”t have had such a voice at the commission hearing if she hadn”t been able to make this new thing.”
Today, Moore is still at Google and is working with other groups who harbor similar concerns.
“We are working with a tribal chief in the Amazon of Brazil,” Moore said. “He came to Google after hearing about using Google Earth to protect forests. He says there are illegal loggers on his territory who are building illegal roads and illegally taking trees.”
Google has also worked with advocacy groups to map mountain top removal coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains.
Google Earth and similar tools have become easier to use for the average person, but Moore”s project involved a great deal of expertise.
While some are empowered, still others without access to computers or technological know-how to use the tools in creative ways will be challenged to create their own compelling evidence.
“The tools will continue to improve, but there will always be people who are not literate in the technology and that”s going to be a disempowered position,” Sack said. “We”ll always have an elite that are very fluent with these things, and they will have more say.”
Sack talked of the need to build “literacy” and then “fluency” with the new tools of government access. Just as those who could not read in the past were sidelined in the democratic process, those who are not computer literate will be disadvantaged when working with public records and data analysis.
“We are trying to democratize access to cartography,” Moore said.
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What: Google Earth Outreach
What: Tutorials, case studies and examples that nonprofits around the world can use