WMS in Google Earth.

I have thought there is something very interesting maybe you guys have never tried… using your Google Earth sesssion not just for navigating, finding your house or the place you are going on holidays to… If you use the WMS protocol to show your map over your 3D scenario you are going to add a little bit more of interest to your Google Earth… Lets add a Corine Land Cover Map over my 3D map…but, What is WMS???, What is Corine Land Cover???. Im not even trying to tell you by myself, I am opeining my WIKIPEDIA to tell you, hehe…

WMS

A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving georeferenced map images over the Internet that are generated by a map server using data from a GIS database. The specification was developed and first published by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 1999.

CORINE LAND COVER

CORINE (Coordination of information on the environment) is a European programme initiated in 1985 by the European Commission, aimed at gathering information relating to the environment on certain priority topics for the European Union (air, water, soil, land cover, coastal erosion, biotopes, etc.). Since 1994, the European Environment Agency (EEA) integrated CORINE in its work programme. EEA is responsible for providing objective, timely and targeted information on Europe’s environment.

This is the Official Corine Land Cover key map.

This is the area I would like to know more about, Chiclana de la Frontera in Cádiz, SW of Spain.

This is once we get connected via WMS to the place where you can get those maps (http://www.idee.es/wms/IGN-Corine/IGN-Corine?). By the way you can search on the internet to get more maps… you just have to go to google and search for ‘wms maps’ and you’ll be able to find them. This is a Corine Land Cover Map with information from year 1990.

This is a Corine Land Cover Map with information from year 2000.

This is what we find after comparing both images… I have compared them using Photoshop CSX but you can go further and use global Mapper, ER Mapper or ArcGIS… As you can see, those areas highlighed are the areas with changes (very small in this case)…

More geographic post to come very soon!!!

Alberto