Undergraduate geology map overlay in Google Earth
I have been updating my guide to our students on how to complete their independent mapping dissertation and thinking about the use of Google Earth after a number of posts, including mine, looked at the use of One Geology maps and Google Earth. The One Geology maps are a bit too large scale for use in undergraduate mapping areas, which for UK students at least are only a few kilometres wide, but it was the post by the Lab Lemming who uploaded some of his own fantasy Dungeons and Dragons maps that alerted me to the fact than any scanned image could be uploaded and georectified.
I’m sure that I’m not the first one to try to upload undergraduate geology mapping into Google Earth but a quick search of t’interweb doesn’t turn up much so I thought I’d give it a try and blog the results. Our students map in the Cantabrian Mountains of Northern Spain which has some nice relief to it to drape the mapping over. Bizarrely, through historical accident, although I’ve never been to the area, I have responsibility for the dissertation guide. We have just had to move areas by a couple of valleys due to an incident between students from another university and some migrant workers so I can safely use a map from a couple of years ago and not give the game away to the current students as to the exact nature of the geology.
Georectifying geology map
Inserting the scanned overlay from the Add menu was very easy. Georectifying the image was a but fiddly at first by dragging the overlay edges to their correct location but this was largely due to my not having been there and knowing the area. If I have to do it again it will be a lot quicker. Setting the overlay transparency to about 50% and turning the roads layer on in Google Earth and then matching roads and river valleys proved the best way to do it in the end.
The results I think are quite stunning and could be very useful in future mapping projects. Using it in the field (or at least at the hotel in the evenings) could be used to check the mapping accuracy and even scout for new localities.
Second view of geology map overlay
