1. Mapping Glacier Data and Photographs via GeoServer and Virtual Globes
Lisa M. Ballagh, I-Pin Wang and Allaina Wallace
National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder Colorado
Background: Muir Glacier, 2004, taken by Bruce F. Molnia, Glacier Photograph Collection

2. Overview Glacier data sets Google Earth demonstration
Glacier Photograph Collection
Glacier data sets
Google Earth demonstration
GeoServer overview
NSIDC’s Virtual Globes site
GLIMS
Fluctuations of Glaciers
World Glacier Inventory

3. Glacier Photograph Collection
Coverage primarily includes
Alaska and Greenland
Doubled in size since Jan. 31, 2008
USGS Ice and Climate Project
Contributions from Austin Post
10,000+ photographs online

4. Arapaho Glacier Jon Van de Grift August 2004
Junius Henderson September 1912
Henry A Waldrop September 1966

5. Repeat Photography Holgate Glacier Bruce F. Molnia August 2004
Ulysses S. Grant July 1909
Bruce F. Molnia August 2004

6. World Glacier Inventory (WGI)
Online database of 100,000+ glaciers
Snapshot of glacier data including
Latitude/longitude
Total area
Mean depth
Photo year
Topographic scale
and more...

7. WGI in Google Earth
Objective: Make WGI data accessible from Google Earth (or another Virtual Globe)
Problem: Data set size would create an unreasonably large static KML file
Solution: Dynamically request area-specific WGI data from GeoServer
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL database.  It enables the PostgreSQL database server to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information system (GIS).  In many ways, it's like the Oracle's spatial extension or the Spatial Query Server for Sybase.  Related to this talk, PostGIS allows us to spatially represent our glacier and photographic data stored in our PostgreSQL database on GeoServer and export  it to Virtual Global. 

8. WGI  KML SQL Server OpenLayers PDF MySQL GeoServer Input Output
PostGIS
KML
PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL database.  It enables the PostgreSQL database server to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information system (GIS).  In many ways, it's like the Oracle's spatial extension or the Spatial Query Server for Sybase.  Related to this talk, PostGIS allows us to spatially represent our glacier and photographic data stored in our PostgreSQL database on GeoServer and export  it to Virtual Global. 
Oracle
SVG
Shapefile
GeoRSS

9. A View from Google Earth

10. A View from Google Earth

11. A View from Google Earth

12. A View from Google Earth

13. At the Heart: GeoServer
Open source server
Key: interoperability
Supports OGC standards
“Share and edit geospatial data”
GUI-driven
Why use GeoServer? Output to KML, OpenLayers, GeoRSS, PDF and SVG

15. GeoServer  Google Earth
Auto-generated KML file is user unfriendly
Use templates and Styled Layer Descriptors (SLDs) to customize the output in KML
Create a KML template
Helps with data presentation
Develop a Styled Layer Descriptor
Snowflake Placemarks

16. GeoServer
Example SLD

17. GeoServer
Example KML template (description.ftl)

18. NSIDC’s Virtual Globes Site

19. Summary Glacier Photograph Collection has doubled
WGI now available as a KML file
GeoServer helps serve data through Google Earth
Users can view two data sets in a spatial environment
Thanks to NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center
Questions/comments:
Lisa Ballagh