IPY Public Outreach Using Virtual Globes: A prototype example of interactive and non-interactive tools based on McCall Glacier research

Peter Prokein, Matt Nolan

University of Alaska Fairbanks, P.O. Box 755860, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States

As the International Polar Year is almost here, we have developed several prototype virtual globe examples of public outreach methods that can be easily duplicated by other researchers for their own projects. Here we focus on McCall Glacier, a small glacier in Arctic Alaska that has been studied since the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58. We have made use of EarthSLOT and Google Earth for the interactive portions of this outreach. Here, users can take an interactive, yet audio and video guided tour of the research going on here, stopping at any point to fly themselves around, examine or make measurements, see photographs and movies spanning 50 years, or simply fly around the glacier on their own and visualize it at 60 cm spatial resolution. We will outline the methods for ingesting the research data, creating the audio and video tours, and integrating this into a complete package. We will also show examples of how these interactive applications were used to create movies which are streamed over the internet or run from DVD. The methods required to create these interactive and non-interactive applications are fairly straightforward and can be accomplished by nearly any scientist, without much need for technical support.

URL:
http://www.ipy.org/