Cartography Week 7: Google Earth

For this week's lab, we explored how to create maps in Google Earth. In the first part of the lab, we created a map of southern Florida in Google Earth with different types of surface water represented by different colors and a dot density layer in which each dot represented 10,000 people. I opened the surface water layer in ArcGIS Pro, adjusted the symbology, and converted it to KML. I then opened this KMZ file in Google Earth, along with the county boundary layer and the dot density layer. Using the Image Overlay tool in Google Earth, I added the image of the legend from the lab data folder.



For the second part of the lab, I created a recorded tour of the major metropolitan areas of southern Florida in Google Earth. I created placemarks for cities and metropolitan areas and zoomed to those locations, turning off and on the dot density map as appropriate. For downtowns, I zoomed close enough to see the 3D building effects in Google Earth, which I thought was a fun tool. I saved the tour as a KMZ file so it can be opened by anyone in Google Earth.

A screenshot from my recorded tour of southern Florida


One mistake I made was trying to follow the lab instructions in the regular online version of Google Earth. I wasted a good amount of time being baffled before I realized I had to download Google Earth Pro, which has a completely different layout and functionality. However, I still found Google Earth Pro difficult to navigate. For example, the method of placing the image overlay for the legend image was confusing and awkward for me. I'm not sure if the general clunkiness was due to my computer being slow, Google Earth's outdatedness, or my lack of familiarity with the program. I remembered Google Earth from when I was a kid, but I wasn't aware that it still existed anymore, or that it had any functions beyond what Google Maps has, so this lab was a fun throwback. 

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