Thursday, January 29, 2009

Global Fisheries Catches From 1950-2004

The Sea Around Us Project

http://seaaroundus.org/

Overfishing, driven by subsidies of over $30 billion USD per year, has depleted fish populations worldwide, and is compromising ecosystem structure and function. The costs are becoming increasingly unacceptable. We have assembled global databases of catches, distributions of commercial marine species, countries fishing access agreements, ex-vessel prices, marine protected areas and other data, and mapped these. This information, integrated using powerful new analyses, enabled us to illustrate worrying ecosystem impacts of fisheries.

This Google Earth layer presents the data in three ways:
1. Clickable points that provide static summaries of total catches made in countries' territories and on the high seas;
2. A dynamic animation of the annual catch rates (in tonnes per square km per year), showing where fisheries started, collapsed, and subsequently moved to;
3. A dynamic animation of the spread of fisheries catch across the globe.


http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/small/global_fisheries_catch_sm.jpg

http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/large/global_fisheries_catch_lg.jpg

Open in Google Earth

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Francis Gary Powers: The U-2 Incident

BeadieJay

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/1270728

On May 1st 1960, an experienced pilot working on a secret CIA mission to photograph missile sites was flying over the USSR in a top secret aircraft. That aircraft was the U-2 spy plane and the pilot was Francis Gary Powers.

In an event that had a profound effect on the cold war, this incident has been re-told through KML.

By collecting a vast array of information from a range of historical repositories, BeadieJay, a member of the Google Earth Community communicates the story of the U-2 incident in Google Earth and through textual and photographic information, this KML facilitates a greater understanding of the locations involved and provides the story with a geospatial voice.


http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/small/francis_gary_powers_sm.jpg

http://earth.google.com/gallery/images/large/francis_gary_powers_lg.jpg

Open in Google Earth