Aerial Maps Have Potential To Chart Environmental And Social Changes

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Although the term cartography is rarely included in the vocabulary of the youth today, the practice is becoming ever more popular. Map making has always been a precise art, and now new changes in technology have propelled cartography to a new dimension, literally. Google Earth and Google Ocean use photography to create three dimensional aerial maps for internet users to explore twenty four-hours a day.

The phenomenon has been widespread, and since the recent attention the street views application received in the media lately, even more people are downloading the software to explore the streets in search of more than just interesting buildings. The trouble over the images produced lately centred around people being snapped entering adult shops, vomiting in the street and even caught having illicit affairs.

Aerial maps such as these are created using many types of aerial photography. This can be from a camera attached to a vehicle, crane, helicopter or aeroplane. Successive pictures are taken, a little like taking a panoramic picture with a regular camera, and each of these images are then stitched together to produce an aerial image, or a street view.

Special software allows the user to explore the pictures from a bird's eye view in Google Earth and Ocean, and in a more interactive three dimensional way in street view. Arial maps such as these not only offer entertainment, they also improve and expand knowledge. It allows the user to explore the planet and understand the interaction between natural environments as well as giving insight into the notion of a global community.

Applications that use aerial mapping have the potential to change a person's perspective about the world we live in and appreciate the different countries and continents and what they have to offer. There are also practical applications for such technology too. Combined with GPS mapping, aerial mapping can log and record rivers, rainforests, coastlines and industrial areas as part of an environmental monitoring project.

Simply by comparing the aerial maps of today with those of the past, or indeed comparing future images that will be taken against maps available today it is possible to track the progress of environmental change on a global scale. For an application that has been heralded as a bit of office fun, or an educational tool, the software used in aerial mapping has huge potential to monitor the social and environmental changes that are taking place around the world.


About the Author:
Dom Donaldson is a mapping expert.
Find out more about Aerial Maps and aerial photography technology and applications at Get Mapping.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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