The Excellent Adventure

Caught this on the Google Earth blog:

The second presentation I wanted to mention was by the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, Univ. of New Hampshire (summary here). Working in conjunction with NOAA, they have developed an excellent visualization in Google Earth to illustrate where shipping traffic has been accidentally killing right whales (these whales are close to extinction). They took data on reports of whale collisions and detailed shipping position tracks (from NOAA AIS vessel tracking), and combined it with known whale migration patterns. This resulted in discovering that with some slight modifications to shipping traffic paterns, vessels could greatly reduce chances of collisions. Google Earth clearly illustrates the dynamics of the situation. I hope to get a screenshot and KML file from these guys later.

Tags: Environment, Navigation

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