A t l a s O u t c r o p L o c a t i o n s U s i n g G o o g l e Earth™ P l a c e m a r k s

Mark H . Leander
Maersk Oil America Inc., Houston, Texas, USA

Executive Summary
Following Google's 2004 acquisition of Keyhole Corp. and the subsequent release of Google Earth™ mapping service in
2005, people all over the world have a bird's-eye view of the world at their fingertips. Google Earth™ provides a global mosaic of
aerial photographs and satellite imagery integrated with a variety of other information including roads, towns, parks, and other
cultural features. Most importantly, it provides the means for users to post their own content and to interact with each other in
the Google Earth™ Community. The images used in the mosaic were all obtained in the last three years and are continuously
updated. Image resolution, although overall very good, is variable. In some areas, image resolution can be as high as 1 m (3.3
ft) per pixel; however, in other areas the image resolution is low and may be blurry at the desired view.
The images in Google Earth™ provide an excellent context to see the spatial distribution of geology and terrain as well as a
great forum to collaborate with others. Best of all, it's free and simple to use. With the growing popularity of Google Earth™
it is appropriate to provide the outctop locations in this Atlas as a collection of "placemarks" that can be viewed in Google
Earth™.
Using the information provided by the contributing authors, the outcrop locations in this Atlas were identified. In some
cases, the authors provided latitudes and longitudes that were accompanied by maps and images that resulted in fairly exact
placemarks. In other cases the latitudes and longitudes didn't exactly match the imagery and locations were adjusted to coincide
with outcrops visible in Google Earth™. In a few cases, the locations could not be precisely defined because of the fidelity of
defining information and/or low resolution imagery However, in all cases the placemarks provided are reasonably close to the
actual locations. For contributions that reference a great number of field measurements scattered across a broad area, a location
was selected to represent a locus of these points. For all of these reasons, the precision of locations provided cannot be warranted,
but every effort was made to provide sensible locations that satisfy the purpose of this Atlas.
Google Earth™ is a free download (http://earth.google.com). Once it is downloaded on your computer, simply double-
clicking the placemark file provided on the CD-ROM in the inside back cover of this Atlas will enable you to explore the outcrop
locations provided and to visualize the spatial context of these observations. Google Earth™ also offers Pro and Enterprise ver-
sions of their software to support business use of their application and data. Whether you are new to Google Earth™ or a veteran
user, I think you will agree that we need to do more of this. Perhaps the Google Earth™ Community would be a suitable place
for our community of practice to gather outcrop locations and information in the public domain for sharing and discussion.

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Studies in Geology 56
Copyright ©2007 by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. DOI: 10.1306/12401043St563319
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