Indigenous Mapping: A new Google technology workshop for tribal peoples

Indigenous people worldwide face special challenges in planning, policy and advocacy work. Issues such as cultural preservation, sovereignty, land use management, and handling mineral rights are just a few that they have to tackle. Recognizing this, we're happy to announce that Google and the Indigenous Mapping Network are teaming up to put on a two day workshop on the Google campus to teach people from native communities how to use Google's mapping technologies.

The mission of IMN has been to empower native communities by connecting them with the tools they need to protect, preserve, and enhance their way of life within their aboriginal territories. And they endeavor to bridge the gap between traditional "mapping" practices and modern mapping technologies.

On February 25th and 26th, 2010, Google and IMN will host a workshop on the Google campus for members and staff of indigenous groups who want to learn about Google geospatial and mobile technologies. This hands-on workshop will approach Google technologies with the special concerns of indigenous communities in mind, and will focus on the technical aspects of using Google Earth, Google Maps, Sketchup, Android mobile phones and Open Data Kit, among other technologies. Special attention will be given to:

• privacy and security of data
• mobile data collection
• data conversion from proprietary to open formats
• case studies blending geospatial technologies and traditional knowledge (see our previous posts: Tribe Teams with Google to make stand in Amazon, Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops)
• Google Earth as a new storytelling medium: how to create compelling narrative-driven visualizations

We are very excited to be hosting this event, and look forward to a long relationship with IMN. For more information and to register for this workshop, go to the IMN website.

Posted by Mano Marks, Geo Developer Advocate, and Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach

Exploring climate solutions: One tour at a time

As part of the lead-up to COP15, we have been releasing a series of Google Earth tours that illustrate climate change issues and solutions. Many of these include tours created by NGOs, which guide you through their efforts to tackle some of the impacts of our changing climate on human life, wildlife, and our environment.
Recently, we have added six new tours to the series, and they cross a wide breadth of issues, including climate change science, human health, renewable energy, wildlife migration and ocean conservation.

View them now at www.google.com/cop15

In Projecting Future Climate Change, Stephen Schneider, climate scientist and professor at Stanford University, introduces us to the factors that affect future climate change, how scientists make projections, and what we can do to prevent the worst impacts.

• In Climate & Health in Africa, the International Research Institute for Climate & Society (IRI) guides us through some of the work they are doing to project where meningitis may impact humans in the future under a changing climate, and illustrates their work with groups on the ground in Africa.

• In Harnessing Coal River Wind in Appalachia, the Coal River Wind Project describes a more renewable energy option -- wind farms -- in the Appalachian Mountains that they are fighting for as an alternative to mountaintop removal for coal mining.

• In Greenfreeze and SolarChill, Greenpeace describes Greenfreeze, a market-proven, revolutionary environmentally-friendly refrigeration technology that doesn't release greenhouse gases. The SolarChill project brings solar-powered fridges to Africa for food storage, and a refrigeration method that meets the WHO standards for vaccine storage.
  
  

• In Protecting the Arctic Ocean, Oceana guides you through the problems that the Arctic Ocean is facing due to climate change, and introduces you to the positive changes that have been made due to policies protecting certain parts of the Arctic from commercial fishing and other activities.
  
  
• In Saving North America's Wildlife in a Warmer World by Freedom to Roam, learn about wildlife corridors for some of the continent's flagship species to enable them to migrate north and to higher altitudes as the globe warms.

Get started now - go to www.google.com/cop15 and pick a tour.

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman and Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach

Wild about Africa

[We invited March Turnbull from the MAPA Project to write a guest post and describe the work they've done to create a detailed map of Africa's protected areas -- Ed.]

The greatest wildlife show on earth is about to arrive on your PC.

Africa is the last continent on earth to hold on to its ‘megafauna’ – the really big stuff like elephants, rhinos and herds of antelope tens thousands strong - and it’s hanging on to them by the skin on its teeth.

Here at the MAPA Project, we’re making sure that no one can say “We never knew!” when it comes to keeping African parks and wildlife in the public eye.

MAPA stands for ‘Mapping Africa’s Protected Areas’ and so far we’ve plotted the major parks, reserves, and protected areas for Southern and East Africa. Check them out on Google Earth and watch epic wildlife video snippets or just find out about places you didn’t even know existed. Download the MAPA layer and find out just how extraordinary our continent is. You can also find the layer in the Google Earth Outreach Showcase.

What’s the largest mammal migration on earth? You’d probably guess the wildebeest migration in East Africa with over a million wildebeest and zebra on the move every year. Well, it may be the heaviest one, but what about the two million fruit bats which gather in Kasanka National Park in Zambia every November and fly off every evening, darkening the sky for twenty minutes? Nobody knows why they all go there, but go they do – and you can too.

It’s a work-in-progress and we have thousands more parks, blog posts, research projects and icons to get up but we are really on our way now. We plan to be at it for another couple of years but if you need to know anything about conservation in Africa, start here and you will end up in the right place.

Conservationists and GIS enthusiasts all across Africa are helping us to pull this groundbreaking project together. You can too: each park and reserve on the map tells its story and each links to websites with even more info. Bloggers are welcome on the layer and over fifty are already keeping us posted with what they are doing for conservation.

Have you ever wondered what happens to all those tracks that researchers download from satellite collars on the National Geographic channel? Well we did too, so we’re looking for them and we’ve already put a couple online for you to unravel, with plenty more to come.

So, if you are considering traveling in Africa, if you need some really credible background to that news story or school project, or if you just know the value of something that is irreplaceable, load this layer and watch what Africa is doing to conserve its priceless environmental legacy. For more information on how to get involved, visit www.mapaproject.org.

Posted by March Turnbull, Mapping Africa's Protected Areas