Google Earth Library

OnEarth WMS

December 17th, 2009 No comments

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology has numerous global overlays available that can be viewed with Google Earth. These overlays are on WMS servers, which can be a little tricky to set up in Google Earth, so I have done the hard part and all you have to do is download the file below the screenshot to access all of them. This following layers are included:

1990 Land Characteristics – The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) layer covers the continental United States and shows general land characteristics from 1990. This overlay is available in eight different formats (real color, pseudo-color, red band, etc.)

Landsat7 Global Mosaic - The Landsat7 layer covers the entire Earth and shows a mosaic of imagery obtained from the Landsat7 satellite. I believe this imagery was probably obtained in the early 2000’s. This overlay is available in 15 different formats (real color, pseudo-color, Pan Sharpened, red band, thermal band, etc.)

Blue Marble Next Generation Global Mosaic - The Blue Marble layer covers the entire Earth and shows a mosaic of imagery obtained from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua and Terra satellites. I believe this imagery was probably obtained in the mid 2000’s. There are separate mosaics for each month of the year and also various other options, such as the ability to view the mosaics with or without bathymetry shading.

SRTM Reflectance - The SRTM Reflectance layer covers the entire Earth and shows data collected by the Space Shuttle in 2000. This data was used to generate a highly accurate elevation grid of the Earth. There are separate mosaics for each of the four subswaths and and an average. In addition, a 90 meter SRTM Derived Elevation Model is included.

National Elevation Dataset (NED)- The National Elevation Dataset layer covers the continental United States and shows a grey scale elevation map. 30 meter and 90 meter versions of the overlays are provided.

MODIS Dailey Planet - The Dailey Planet layer covers the entire Earth and shows a continuously updated mosaic of imagery obtained from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua and Terra satellites. I believe the age of this imagery is typically less than 24 hours old with the Terra imagery from the morning and Aqua imagery from the afternoon.

Much more information about each of these layers is available at the OnEarth website

SRTM Reflectence

NASA Blue Marble

Credits

Google Earth Library

See above descriptions

TerraLook Archive

November 27th, 2009 2 comments

The TerraLook Archive contains 1,000’s of satellite images from the Terra and Landsat satellites. Many of the images covering environmentally sensitive areas (South American rainforests, etc.) throughout the Earth have been converted for viewing in Google Earth by Dr. Mark Mulligan of King’s College London. The images in this collection date from 1972 to 2006.

Simply select the year you are interested in and zoom into one of the areas covered with imagery. The imagery should appear automatically.

Terralook Archive

Deforestation

Credits

Kings College London

USGS TerraLook

3Dsolar Addons

March 8th, 2009 No comments

3D Solar is a great collection of several useful sets of data, including:

MODIS Rapid Response System consists of near real time imagery captured by NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. New satellite images are released daily and they typically show something of interest, such as tropical storms, wildfires, volcanic ash plumes, and other large scale events that are visible from space. The interface to load the images is a bit confusing. You have to be careful not to try and load all of them at the same time.
MODIS Terra & Aqua - These layers do not appear to work.
USGS Ortho 1 meter - This layer will load black & white aerial photographs for the lower 48 United States. These aerial photographs typically date from the mid to late 1990s.
USGS Topo Maps - This layer will load the USGS Topographic maps for all 50 United States. The scale of the map decreases automatically as you zoom in.
Landsat 7 IR1 - This appears to be a global mosaic of historical infrared satellite imagery from the Landsat7 satellite.
US Navy Cloud Top - Global overlay of cloud imagery updated every three hours.

USGS Topographic Map

MODIS Rapid Response

Credits

http://www.3dsolar.com

Google Earth BBS Forums

Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA)

December 1st, 2007 No comments

High resolution satellite imagery of Antarctica brought to Google Earth via WMS. Collection includes several different overlays including Color IR and Natural Color at different contrast levels. Also includes some other misc. Antarctica data, such as Glacier names, RadarSat DEM, MOA Satellite overlays, etc.

I did not create any of this data. I’ve simply taken the information for WMS servers provided by the LIMA project and organized it into an easy to use KML file.

WMS will only load a small area at a time. Each time you stop moving the view around, wait a few seconds and it will load a new area. It works best if you are looking straight down at the earth’s surface. There are several different versions of the LIMA overlays available. The 1X, 3X, 10X, etc. represent different contrast levels, which can improve the visibility in some areas.