Google Earth and Google Fusion Tables in support of time-critical collaboration: Mapping the deepwater horizon oil spill with the AVIRIS airborne spectrometer

Web interfaces have made remote sensing image resources more accessible and interactive. However, many web-based and Digital Earth opportunities for remote sensing have not yet been fully explored and could greatly facilitate scientific collaboration. In many cases, these resources can augment traditional proprietary software packages, which can have limited flexibility, spatiotemporal controls, and data synthesis abilities. In this paper, we discuss how web services and Google Earth were used for time-critical geovisualizations of the NASA Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) Deepwater Horizon oil spill imaging campaign. In particular, we describe how (1) AVIRIS Google Earth products were used to visualize the spatial and temporal characteristics of the campaign’s image acquisitions, critically needed for flight planning, (2) the Google Fusion Table cloud-based service was applied to create a highly-interactive image archive and mapping display, and (3) the Google Fusion Table API was utilized to create a flexible PHP-based interface for metadata creation and as the basis for an interactive data catalog. Although there are other possible software and programming approaches to these activities, we highlight freely-accessible and flexible solutions and bring attention to the newly introduced Google Fusion Tables as a collaborative scientific platform.     

Origin of post‐Minoan caves and volcaniclastic cave fill,Thera (Santorini), Greece

The Aegean island of Thera (Santorini) was covered by tephra from its cataclysmic Late Bronze Age (ca. 3600 yr B.P.) eruption. Vertical exposures of the eruptive sequence show secondary, nonvolcanic, circular (in cross section) features composed of stratified sediment. Many are inaccessible from the floors of modern quarries and appear to be caves filled with younger sediment, but show no connection to the land surface. A filled cave was found in the wall of a modern gully outside the modern quarries, and a filled cave was found in a terrace scarp, well above the modern gully. Natural (and probably rapid) incision by gullies into the thick tephra deposit left many locations with lateral access to tephra. Inhabitants from post‐Minoan to recent times excavated tephra for materials and buildings, and caves were subsequently filled by sporadic (possibly seasonal) flood events that deposited sediment. These gullies may have provided access for modern tephra removal that isolated the filled caves high on the modern quarry walls. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Thin section petrography of northern Lesser Antilles ceramics

Thin sections from 44 sherds representing eight prehistoric sites on four islands (Barbuda, Montserrat, Anguilla, St. Martin) in the northern Lesser Antilles (West Indies) were examined using a petrographic microscope. Point counting distinguished three temper associations: (1) exclusively volcanic,(2) volcanic and carbonate, and (3) volcanic, carbonate, and grog. Exclusively volcanic or dominantly volcanic (with low carbonate) temper associations occur in all Saladoid and many post-Saladoid sherds, with plagioclase feld-spar and volcanic rock fragments being most abundant. Thin sections with significant carbonate content or with grog were restricted to post-Saladoid sherds from Barbuda and to a lesser extent Anguilla. the presence of volcanic grains in sherds from the limestone islands of Barbuda and Anguilla indicates that volcanic islands in the region served as sources of pottery (or volcanic temper) for these two islands.