Spatial - Ed.com

BLM, GPS/GIS and real estate all have what in common?

Location, location, location - each one of their projects is tied to a location on the ground. By publishing the Route Inventory and Race Route data for use with popular Google mapping tools,  the two-way communication of data is opened.  This will encourage public involvement in the travel management and recreation permit processes by which the BLM manages the public lands.

Google mapping tools provide many datasets to view locations such as cities, roads, addresses and a wide assortment of landmarks (from coffee shops to mountain ranges).  These are displayed atop background data (street maps, terrain and satellite images) for familiar points of reference.  We can also interact with this data to generate custom driving directions, on-screen virtual tours and many more tricks.  All this information can be viewed ‘live’ on the Internet but it can also be moved to a desktop computer or other mobile devices such as laptops, GPS units and cell phones.

The COOLEST part of Google mapping

Google provided data can be combined with data that YOU create.  Point, linear or area locations can be drawn on screen, by entering sets of coordinates or directly from you own GPS unit.  Each of these locations can have text, photos or even videos attached to convey important information about each location.  The data you create can be sent to others in a KML or KMZ file.  When the recipient opens this file, they can review your data.  They can also create point, line and area locations with attached text or images to supplement or comment on your information.

View the BLM Route Data Online

For your convenience, Google Maps has been ‘embedded’ on this site.  There is NO need to download any software or files. Once the files load, you are can pan, zoom, click on routes and explore BLM route data with the Google reference layers (note: there not many coffee shops in our project areas).  By default,  route data is shown in the Terrain View.  In the top right hand corner, click on the Map, Satellite and Hybrid views to see how these background maps and images differ.  The Earth view offers an eye-opening 3D perspective.  The Earth view does require a browser plug-in.

Optional Google Earth View plug-in

http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/plugin.html

You really need to look at the data in desktop Google Earth

View the data online to good for getting a glimpse of the dataset and its surroundings.  To really delve into the data,  download the route data as a KMZ file and view it in the Google Earth desktop application The quality of the experience for  is infinitely better and there are so many other things you can do in Google Earth.