When perusing Google Earth’s satellite view, any relevant images will appear as thumbnails which can be tapped to expand to a slideshow view. It’s a lot like Instagram’s Photo Maps, except the underlying world is far more detailed. It’s a contextualization of photos that adds a layer of rich depth. It would be great to see this sort of thing built directly into Google+, but for now having it as part of Google Earth will have to do. You can find the latest update in the Play Store now.
Surprisingly, one of these detailed views comes from space. Fisher has teamed up with satellite companies and engineers from Google to deliver high-resolution satellite images of some of the least explored areas of Madagascar. Fisher can reference these images in the field, even when no network access is available.
The company provides decision-makers with complete solutions enabling them to increase security, boost agricultural performance, maximize oil and gas or mining operations, improve their management of natural resources, and protect the environment.
By leveraging the synergies and expertise available across the whole of Astrium Services, its GEO-Information teams develop innovative, yet competitive, custom-made solutions based on the combination and integration of Earth observation, navigation and high-end telecommunications.
Of course, protecting biodiversity requires a solid understanding of the species that are actually out there. This is a huge job in places as species-rich as Madagascar—even if you’re focused only on ants. Fisher and his team of 20 Malagasy scientists and students, as well as five postdocs here in San Francisco, are busy trying to identify and describe the hundreds of new species of ants they’ve discovered in Madagascar. The thinking is that the more species they document, the stronger the efforts will be to save the habitats where these organisms live.
This four-satellite constellation makes Astrium Services the first satellite operator in the world to offer a complete range of Earth-observation data at different resolutions (from medium to very high-resolution), an image collection capacity of up to 6.5 million square kilometers each day and the ability to image every point of the globe on a daily basis.