Google Earth Outreach. Street View climate change.
Google Earth Outreach. November 30, 2015 From polar bears in the Canadian Arctic, to communities in the Brazilian Amazon, to blue oak trees in Central California, the impacts of climate change are being felt by plants, animals and people across the planet. As world leaders gather for the COP21 conference in Paris this week to discuss our changing climate, we want to take this opportunity to show you how to explore its impact yourself. With Street View, you can get a window into some of our world’s changing ecosystems, and learn how nonprofit and other organizations are working to keep our planet healthy. Google Earth Outreach. earthtopomaps.com
Polar bears are in trouble because of the melting sea ice, on which they depend to survive. That’s why Polar Bears International (PBI) borrowed the Street View Trekker to map polar bears in their fragile sea ice habitat around Churchill, Manitoba, to share the remote ecosystem with people all over the world. And to educate classrooms, PBI created a lesson plan and activity for schools to do their own exploration of this precious habitat. Google Earth Outreach.
Polar bear on the edge of Hudson Bay, waiting for the sea ice to freeze (see more here)
Experts agree that one way to slow climate change is to protect the standing forests that we have now. As these trees remove and stock carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. The Brazilian nonprofit Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) borrowed the Trekker to show people exactly what the Amazon forest looks like on the ground and put isolated local communities on the map. They captured imagery from three different reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, including hundreds of kilometers walking through pristine forests and floating down Amazon river tributaries. The nonprofit is using the imagery to educate the world about rainforest protection and sustainable ecosystem management.Google Earth Outreach.
Street View is great for visualizing the impacts of climate change. But we’re also using our Street View platform to measure climate data. Which can be used by scientists. Policymakers. Businesses and citizens to drive better decisions. Google Earth Outreach
For the past few years, Google Earth Outreach has worked with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). To map thousands of methane leaks from natural gas lines under select U.S. city streets using Street View cars equipped with methane analyzers. Recently, one of the largest U.S. utilities, PSE&G announced that they will use data and maps from our Street View mapping effort to prioritize the replacement of hundreds of miles of gas mains and thousands of service lines for their newly approved multi-million dollar pipeline replacement program. Google Earth Outreach.